accioss | Lighting guide + favorite textures

Here's a lighting guide requested by

applepips16 and my favorite textures requested by

adriftingsea :)
It's quite basic, but I think included the most important parts!

I generally do my lighting using gradients in various shapes and styles. Sometimes I use textures, but not so much anymore. :)

My very favorite thing!

I basically always use the default b&w gradient on soft light for lighting purposes. BUT, the trick is using other styles than just linear! And also change the angle and scale. :)

Here is a base (with only a screen layer):

For icons that have close crops, or not a lot of background, I like to put my gradients on the "Reflected" style and and angle on around 0°.

This is my base with this gradient on 67% opacity and moved a bit to the side (you can move a gradient as long as you have the gradient window open):

See how it adds both lighting and interesting shadows in the icon?

You can also use the normal linear gradient, but remember to change the angle to something you like! Just click around on the circle thing to change the angle easily.
Here is my icon with linear style on -15,95° angle:

If you do this, you may lose quality on the brighter parts, so just adjust the opacity or mask away some of it. :)

Now, for icons that have wider crops and possibly fake backgrounds (mostly then actually), I really love using the circle shape for gradients!
Here's a simple icon to show you what I mean:

Add a new gradient fill like this:

It will look like this (please note I've put the gradient beneath the subject, or it will darken the subject too much):

You can leave it like that, or you can do as I like to do; upp the scale to more than 100% and move it down beneath the subject (I put the scale at 134%)

It looks more natural now, doesn't it?

You can also use the reflected the style on these kind of icons. It will look something like this:

And also the normal linear style (with an angle fitted to where the original light is coming from in the screencap):

Sometimes I use textures to give the icons some extra lighting/shadows.

I'm using the bases as above (without any gradients) to give you examples. :)

This texture by

mm3butterfly (scaled up to 300x300):

Is probably my favorite to add light.
Make it b&w and set it to screen:

Basically you get the light from the reflected gradient, but without the shadow in the middle. ^_^

Here is another texture (made by me, though super simple to make on your own):

This kind works best on closer crop imo.
On screen:

And another, by

talipuu:

This one is best on soft light or screen I think.
Soft light:

Screen (62% opacity):

(You can usually scale light textures up and down without losing quality, but if you do, use surface blur or something to recover them)

Other textures good for lighting (open them in a new tab for full size):

talipuu, livingcolours, likealight, me, mm3butterfly

As always, if you have any questions, please do ask and I'll try my best to answer them :)

Open in a new tab or copy for full size.