SL Dimensions

Getting Started With Starlight (PSD)

Skin Tones

Learn how to switch between preset skin tones with just a few clicks!

This tutorial assumes that, at the very least, you've got a very elementary knowledge of Photoshop (i.e., opening and saving files).

Here's what you'll need,

Starlight PSD files (starlight_face.psd, starlight_upper.psd, starlight_lower.psd)
Adobe Photoshop (CS or newer)

1. Open the Starlight Face PSD file (it should be named starlight_face.psd).

2. Make sure you can see your "Layer Comps" palette; if not, you can show it by selecting "Window," "Layer Comps" from the menu bar.

3. Here's what you should see:

4. Selecting a different Layer Comp will change the skin tone! Note, these are non-destructive changes—i.e., they mostly turn on and off or change the opacity of various layers in the "base" group—so you don't need to worry about saving if all you're doing is switching between skin tone presets.

☠ Caveat: some Layer Comp skin tone presets will also turn on/off freckles, alter eyebrow light/darkness, and change nose types! (I'm horribly inconsistent that way, sorry!)

5. Starlight Upper and Lower PSDs also work this way.

6. You'll only be able to change between the five preset skin tones with Layer Comps—I'll go into the gritty details of how to make your own custom skin tone in a more advanced tutorial (coming soon!).

✻ So far, we actually haven't covered anything that's not already done in the in-world skins—but in the next section, we'll do makeup customization, which is totally up to you and not done in-world—so stay tuned!

Makeup

Learn how to make your own makeup with Starlight PSDs—it'll take like five minutes!

This tutorial assumes that, at the very least, you've got an elementary knowledge of Photoshop (e.g., opening and saving files, paint bucket, layers, etc...). You should also know how to upload textures to Second Life and make a skin out of them.

Here's what you'll need,

Starlight Face PSD file (starlight_face.psd)
Adobe Photoshop (CS or newer)

1. Open the Starlight Face PSD file (it should be named starlight_face.psd). Check out Starlight's arrangement of groups and layers (make sure you've got your Layers palette visible)—it should be sort of like Sezmra's Splendor! Here's what you should see:

2. We're making eyeshadow and lipstick, so our focus will be on the groups labeled "eyeshadow" and "lips."

✻ Feel free to turn on or off the layers "eyeliner," "blush," or "freckles" at your leisure.

3. Let's start with eyeshadow: make the group visible and open it—inside, you should see another group called "presets" and two layers—one named "outer (color me!)" and the other named "inner (color me!)." For this tutorial, we'll be messing with the "color me!" layers—the presets are there for convenience (prêt-à-porter) and more advanced manipulations (which I hope to cover in the future).

4. Let's change color of the inner eyeshadow: click on the layer named "inner (color me!)" to select it. Make sure you've selected the actual layer, and not its mask.

You should see a border around the actual layer...

✔ Like this:

✘ Not like this:

✻ If somehow you've gone and selected the layer mask instead and are now stuck, you can just click on the layer thumbnail (it's the left one—left of that "chain" icon) or on the text "inner (color me!)" to unstick yourself!

5. Next pick a color—any color as long as it's not white—and use the paint bucket tool on the layer (just click anywhere on the face), and now the inner eyeshadow should change to the color you've selected!

6. You can change the color of the outer eyeshadow the same way—just make sure you've got the layer named "outer (color me!)" selected.

7. Let's move on to the lips. Show and open the lips group, and you'll see two subgroups labeled, "gloss" and "colors"—we're just going to focus on "colors" right now. Inside "colors," there's a layer named "basic color (color me!)"—it works exactly like the "color me" eyeshadow layers, but we'll do something different just to keep things interesting.

✻ Feel free to turn on or off the "gloss" layer here.

8. Select the "basic color (color me!") lips layer by clicking on it (once again, make sure you've selected the actual layer and not its mask). Next, select from the menu bar, "Image," "Adjustments," "Hue/Saturation"—or you can also press Ctrl-U (Windows) or Cmd-U (Mac)—to bring up the Hue/Saturation adjustment window. Now, play around with the sliders until you've found something you're happy with and press "Ok" (once again, white or near-white colors—i.e., "Lightness" slider turned all the way up—won't do anything)!

☠ Caveat: This "basic" color change is fairly uniform—i.e. it's just really sort of a tint; I'll cover more advanced ways below.

9. You're all done now! You should consider saving your work—either as a new file or over the current file.

Getting Started With Starlight (XCF)

Coming soon! (I'm a little slower with GIMP—it really isn't my forté)

Getting Started With Starlight (AI)

See It Rubs the Gradient On Its Skin Or Else It Gets the Blur Tool Again (under Heroic Mode) (lol...)

Heroic Mode

Heroic Mode! It's never that hard, if you know what you're doing, and you almost always get better stuff out of it!

Coming soon! (Don't worry, they won't be that hard—we'll just be playing with stuff in the "base" group!)

Eyes and Ears—er, I Mean Noses...

Starlight has two different sets of eyes and noses, learn how to use them and what pitfalls to be careful of!

Lips Like Vulgar

22 layers. And that's not even including the lip color presets. Here's how to prevent them from all ganging up and kicking your ass like that scene in the Matrix. No, not that one. The crappy one. Right.