Dee wanks about Icon-making
So I could have used this hour to write fic or something, but I'm still feeling frisky or something, so I didn't. I did this instead.
You know what I hate about icon tutorials? They don't actually teach you anything. They say, "Do this. Do that. Do the hokey-pokey and turn around. End up with this icon. Aren't I great?"
So because I have Lindt and coffee and I've already done what I should do today, and because people said nice things about my icons, I thought I'd do a how-i-make-an-icon walkthrough, showing not just what I do, but why I do it, how I choose what to do, and all the stages where I arse about with things that don't work. I hope this might be of some tiny use to somebody.
Tech specs
I use PhotoShop 6, because that's what I have. Mostly I'll be saying what I do, not necessarily how to precisely set that on the program. Playing around with the options boxes and, as a last resort, the help index will probably help you figure out how to do it, but you can also always ask. *G*
Image selection
The first thing, obviously, is to pick an image. Sometimes I'll have a concept of a specific icon I want to make. Like when I made my fit!Constantine icon (*points to icon on this post*) I knew I wanted to make something with that idea and that image. But when I go on an icon-making spree, I'll just select an image-folder on my computer (like "Potter" or "Johnny" or something) and flick through, opening up any image that looks interesting and then futzing with it. Not all of them will turn into icons, but it's all fun.
For the purpose of this demonstration, I opened my Orlando folder more or less at random, and selected a picture:
Ain't he strange so very like Johnny pretty?
Cropping
Icons are, of course, 100x100 pixels. (They don't have to be. They can be smaller than that. Sometimes you'll want to experiment with smaller concepts, or non-square things. There are many options. But I usually start out by thinking 100x100.) I set the Cut/Marquee tool to "fixed size" of 100x100 px, and then I start dropping the box onto the image. Nothing helps you see what an icon will look like like actually putting a frame around it.
Personally, I'm a fan of the "artsy" crop. You know, off-centre, cutting off bits of the face, just taking in half the body, only keeping the neck and half an ear. That sorta thing. Your mileage may vary - this is, after all, all about what you think looks good in an icon.
I try a couple of different crops on this picture.
Hmm, yeah, OK. I think I like the first one better conceptually, but I want to fit more of his face in it, a bit more of his chin. It's a bit too truncated the way it is. So I go back to the original picture, and I reduce the size, just a little. It's originally 324x480 pixels: I go down to 243x360 (three-quarters of the original size). And then I do my cropping again.
Yes, much better.
Refining the image
What I want to do here is make the basic image as crisp as I can. "Crisp" meaning not just precise or clear, but also in the sharpest colours and contrast (not too sharp, but just so that it holds its integrity once I start adding on layers).
I've yet to find a set way of crisping up an image. Everything seems to require something different. But the first thing I usually try is going the "Auto Levels" option (under "Image" and "Adjust" in PS6).
Hmm. It's stripped all the pink out of it. I'm not sure about that. I quite liked the rose-coloured-glasses thing. But the more I look at it, the more I think that maybe, the cold light of this works better. It's a fairly cold-light sort of expression. So I decide to keep it. After all, if I decide further on that I don't like it, I can always come back to this point, can't I?
It's still not as vivid as it could be, though. Not as sharp. So what I do next is duplicate the layer, and experiment with setting the blend option to "Soft Light" or "Hard Light".
Hmm. "Hard Light" (on the right) might be just a little bit too stark. (But if I want it starker later on, I can always switch that level to "Hard Light". That's the good thing about levels. You can always twiddle with them later.)
Another thing I'll try, to see if I like the effect, is switching the duplicate layer to greyscale, which can give an interesting result. Under "Image" and "Adjust", I'll go to "Hue/Saturation", and turn the saturation down - somewhere between 80 and 100%, usually, and the lightness up a little - around 25%, usually. (I find that if I just desaturate the level, it's too cloudy and dark.) But remember that you can see what changes are happening to the image as you play. Sometimes I don't turn up the brightness, or I adjust the saturation differently.
This time, I go -80 on the saturation, and 10 on the lightness, and then I set the layer to "Hard Light".
I think I'll keep this one. It's lost a lot of its "natural" colour, you'll notice, and that isn't always the way my base images turn out. But it's not really a worry if it does, because in my later layering, I'll be adding "unnatural" colour, and sometimes you don't want that to clash. (Also, remember, I can always come back and fiddle with this layer if I want to tweak things later.)
Layering up
Now it's time for the fun stuff.
First thing's first: I always throw a dark exclusion layer on there, just to get a starting tint. Under "Layer"/"New Fill Layer", I pick "Solid Colour" and just click OK. (It'll be all-white - mine always is, anyway.) I set the layer to "Exclusion" (which makes things interestingly negative; I frequently get distracted by my love of negative here, but then I move on), and then double-click on the layer (in the layer palette) to bring up the colour-option box again. Now I start playing with various colours, watching how they change the look of the image. Dark "jewel" tones are the best - dark reds, greens, purples, blues. Each sort of exclusion acts a different way on the colours.
(Dark red, purple, green and blue, respectively.)
I, like the rest of the icon-makers in the world, will usually end up going with the dark-blue exclusion layer. It adds that nice sepia-rustic feel, and a touch of blue to the blacks. We're all sheep. But I think it looks nice. Baaa. But on this icon, it's a little bit too yellow for me at the moment. I turn the opacity of the level down a bit. At 60%, I'm happy.
Now what I want is some colour/texture. I usually achieve this by bringing in other images. The first thing I'll do is go back to the original image and see if there's any patches of colour/texture I can use from that. I grab a section at the top-right of the original image.
And I paste it as a new layer onto my icon. Now I need to fiddle with the blending to bring my icon-image through. This is always a trial-and-error process, playing with various settings to see what works best.
"Hard Light" @ 100%. Blerk. Too stark.
"Soft Light" @ 100%. Hmm. Interesting. Brings in a little of that pink we lost and provides delicate detail. I like this one. (But I try the others, because maybe I'll like something else better.
"Color Burn" @100%. Always a good bet for burnt edges. It's frequently a bit too messy though. But sometimes that's what you're looking for.
"Overlay" @ 100%. This gives a very interesting effect on this image (not always the case). I like this, I think I'll keep it. For now.
I also flip through every other blend-option, just to see what they throw up. I'm not a theorist, so I have no idea what the various options actually do in terms of an image. I experiment with everything, just to make sure I'm not missing a really interesting possibility. Depending on what you're blending in, sometimes "Hue" or "Color" can give really interesting effects, especially with turned-down opacity.
Anyway, onwards. I'm nowhere near finished with this picture. I want more texture on it, and I've expended the possibilities of the original image, so I go hunting through my image directories, looking for something interesting. Icon-bases are great for this - I love the ones that disappearicons made, but I noticed that she's locked those away, which is kinda sad. Texture-brushes can also be really useful, but since they only work in one colour, they're not as useful for the adding colour-texture to a thing, so they're usually my last option. But never underestimate the texture-potential of basic images. I have a whole directory full of stuff that's really just colour and movement. From that directory, I pull out:
And then I paste it in over the icon. That's right, the whole thing. That way I can move it around until I find a section that I think looks interesting, and if it doesn't work out, I can just move the image again, looking for another good bit. While I'm doing this, I'm obviously also playing with the blend-options and opacity of the layer. I'm just trial-and-erroring until I find something that I like.
Top-left of the pasted image, Hard Light @ 50%. Like the colour-texture, not sure about the scratches over Orli's face.
Top of the picture (Icarus's face and arm), Color Burn @ 100%. I like the red-burn of Orli's profile. As per usual it's a little messy, but I think I really like this one a lot.
Top-right, Color @ 100%. Pretty, but blah.
Mid-right, Hard Light @ 100%. I actually really like what the colour-work's doing here. It's vibrant, it works for me. The problem, of course, is that it's really obscuring the line of the original picture, which is no good at all.
But there's something I can do about that!
I go back to my second layer - the one that was a copy of the original picture, but that I desaturated, remember? I duplicate that layer again (this time I call it "Outline", just to help me talk about it more easily). Now, I move that layer up to the top of the image. (Various ways of doing this. Under "Layer" and "Arrange" pick "Move to Front". Or just drag the layer up to the top on the layer palette.) Now I desaturate it completely (under "Image" and "Adjust"). For now, it's still on "Hard Light", which is what the original duplicate layer was on.
I'd like to make it a little starker, because it's a bit hazy and mucky like it is. So (still on my "Outline" layer), I adjust the contrast up a bit (under "Image", "Adjust", "Brightness/Contrast"). Experimenting as I watch the effect on the image, I eventually decide on 0% brightness, 40% contrast, to up the starkness, but keep the shadows around the edges.
It's still a bit messy around his profile though, isn't it? That's probably because the bit that I chose from the Icarus-picture was a bit messy around there. Trying to fix that, I go back to my Icarus-layer, and try using some Blur/Smooth filters. A Gaussian blur set on 2 gets me a smoother image.
But you know what? (I suddenly realise, looking at this picture). Apart from the border-part on the top and right sides, you can't see anything of that initial texture layer I used, with Orlando's hair in the bottom left. Hmm. I try moving that layer up one (so it's now above the Icarus-layer) to see what happens.
Whoo fucking hoo. Big difference. Just stripped off some of my fun colour texture. Growl. I futz around a little with the blending options and the opacity, trying to see if I can work it in better. But it doesn't work, so I go back to where I was, with it completely unnoticable, basically. (Sometimes these things happen. It's a process, that's my philosophy.) Also, I can always turn the visibility of that layer off (the little eye next to the layer on the palette) to see whether it's actually having any effect on the image at all.
With and without that layer.
So it is having an effect. It's lightening things up a little. OK. That's nice. We'll leave it in there.
I'm feeling pretty happy with this as an icon now. Sure, it's not very heavy-layered, but that's just how the process has turned out this time 'round. My final step in texturising is to see whether I can jazz up the colours further with some interesting gradient layers. "Layer"/"New Layer"/"Gradient", and I usually set it to 40% to start with - so that I can see through it and how the image matches up with the gradient. Then I choose an interesting gradient. Some of my favourites are the purple-to-orange on, and the tones-of-brown one (I think it's called "copper"). I don't have very many "specialty" gradients made by other people, because frankly, anything I want for a specific icon I can custom-make myself in the gradient editor.
However, because this is a light, simple icon (not a lot of texture), gradients are really just looked pretty silly on it.
So stuff that. I'm happy with it like it was. I'll move on to the final step.
Finishing off
Two parts to finalising an icon - border and text.
The first thing I usually do at this point is to combine all the layers, or "Flatten Image". The reason I do this is because I like to check what a finished icon's going to look like by increasing the "Canvas Size" to put some white-space around it, and if all the other layers are hanging over the edge, it mucks things up. However, that's just my personal preference. Whatever you do, don't flatten the layers before you're satisfied with the image, because once they're flattened, you can't go back and twiddle them!
With borders, there's really two options - brushes or a simple stroke. ("Simple stroke" being when I select the whole image, and then right-click and select "stroke". I can do it in any colour, thickness, blending option... it creates a very simple and subtle border if done in "Soft Light", which still provides a border.) Sometimes my texturising of the icon will have me given you "natural" borders, especially if I was using icon-bases. Not the case here. So I head for my icon-border brushes first. Using the eye-dropper tool, I select a colour from the icon - a dark orange from his forehead. I create a new layer for using the brushes on - that way if I stuff up, I can get rid of it easily! And then I try various brushes out, playing with the blending options and the opacity as well (I always do that, had you noticed?).
I come to the conclusion that that orange is far too light. Not working at all. I switch to a darker brown, also lifted off the image with the eye-dropper. Ah, that looks better.
Now, text time. I usually start out using the same colour for the text as I used for the border - shoes and purse, as it were. Placement of text is the most important thing. Almost more important that what you say, really, but that's just my rampant aesthete talking. Text should not impede the image, but draw attention to it, frame it, draw the eye into the icon. (OMG, I sound like my grade nine art teacher or something.) In this icon, the obvious places for text are in the whitepace on the left, or on his face to the right of the profile.
But text saying what? Usually I'm thinking of what to say while I'm making the icon - the music that's playing helps, but also the feel of the icon as it's evolving, and I can get an idea of what I'd like to say on/through the icon. This time I've been a little distracted, but looking at it now... it's all about the fire tones, isn't it? Burnt and burning. Fire, purging, ascetic... stuff like that. Hmm, what about "boy on fire"? That also has nice resonance with how Orlando's so popular these days.
So, I choose the bottom right for the text, and I know what I want to say. And now we come to font-choice. Oh lord, it's enough to mire a girl in indecision for all time, innit? I am such a font-whore. Because this is an elegant-simplicity sort of icon, I go with a cursive font to start with.
Urf. No, this is not working at all. Problem with cursive is that it needs to be pretty big to be entirely legible, and the curling ups and downs (on y and f) get in the way and makes it all a mess. Taking up too much space on the icon as well. Plan B, definitely. I decide to try small caps instead, and go to my stalwart Arial.
Hmm. A bit too simple, really. But if I make it a serif-font, like Georgia...
Still a bit too simple. I think what's required here is a blending of two fonts, to give it a little more interest (since the icon itself is pretty simple, make the text more complicated!) There needs to be a certain amount of difference between two fonts used together, I think. I'll usually use a "plain" font and a "fancy" font when I'm doing this, effectively turning certain words into highlight words. I decide I'll make "fire" into a highlight word, so it's the one that gets the "fancy" font. I flick through my fonts looking for something I like, and settle on Porcelain (another staple). In contrast, I decide that the serif font is too similar, and switch "boy on" back to Arial, and then to Arial Black to bring it out more.
I've brought the "boy on" down onto one line, and have it bracketing the up of the "f". I also move the text up a little, to make sure the down of the "f" is also "in shot". (I know a lot of people make icons with bits of the letter hanging over the edges, but you need to be careful with it - if you cut off the down of a letter, sometimes it's impossible to tell what the letter's supposed to be, and people should be looking at your icons twice because they're gorgeous, not because they can't understand what the hell it's saying.) Another important point is the leading on the text (set in the "character" panel - turn it on if you don't have it showing, under "Window") - I adjust it to make sure that the "boy on" is sitting just above the "fire" - not too close, but so there's that slight overlap. I want the text to hang together as a cohesive block, not be miles apart.
But still, I'm not sure there's enough interest in the text. I try making the "fire" a different colour, going back to that orange I discarded for the borders.
Yeah. I like that.
Other things I might experiment with at this stage include the ubiquitous "small text". Unreadable tiny text can provide a visual element that fills a space but doesn't actually snag attention trying to read it. In this case, I've got that whitespace in the top left that I'm not sure about. It's kinda fun and stark and clean like it is, but maybe it'd look better overall as an icon if I put something in there.
So I have a dabble with the tiny text. I'm a wanker like this, so I like to have it mean something. In this case, I use some lyrics from a Kittie song, because I think they're a little appropriate: "Sit and watch me burn... crucify than learn." Of course, they don't really have to mean anything to anyone but me, because I'm the only one who can see them...
I really like that. Is it just because I'm a sheep on the whole tiny text thing? Probably (baaa). But I think it balances up the icon, and makes it look overall grand.
So that's it. As a final step, I move the text layers so they're underneath the border layer. It doesn't make any appreciable difference to the look of the icon, but it's a just-in-case. I don't always do that either - sometimes keeping the text on top of the border gives an icon a nice "breaking out" look.
But that's it. That's a finished icon, Dee-style. Now I save it: "Save for Web" - ALWAYS. Otherwise it doesn't always turn out the best. I usually save icons as jpgs at 80%, because they're small enough that the extra quality's worth it, I think.
And then I close it, open another picture, and start all over again. I swear, it's quicker to just do it than it is to talk about it a lot. *G*
Addendums
It is a process, and an awful lot depends on the images I use during the "texturising up" of the image. For example, other icons I could have made from the same basic image:
using two disappearicons bases, a "copper" gradient on color burn, and a simple stroke border.
using a purple swirl image, a "orange-to-purple" gradient on hard light at 40%, and a soft-light stroke border.
using two parts of a Stephanie Pui-Mun Law painting, a blue-toned gradient on color burn at 60%, and the ubiquitous stroke border.
The KEY is experimentation. Play, play, play and love thy Photoshop. Mwah.
THE END - congratulations if you made it, have a gold star.
You know what I hate about icon tutorials? They don't actually teach you anything. They say, "Do this. Do that. Do the hokey-pokey and turn around. End up with this icon. Aren't I great?"
So because I have Lindt and coffee and I've already done what I should do today, and because people said nice things about my icons, I thought I'd do a how-i-make-an-icon walkthrough, showing not just what I do, but why I do it, how I choose what to do, and all the stages where I arse about with things that don't work. I hope this might be of some tiny use to somebody.
Tech specs
I use PhotoShop 6, because that's what I have. Mostly I'll be saying what I do, not necessarily how to precisely set that on the program. Playing around with the options boxes and, as a last resort, the help index will probably help you figure out how to do it, but you can also always ask. *G*
Image selection
The first thing, obviously, is to pick an image. Sometimes I'll have a concept of a specific icon I want to make. Like when I made my fit!Constantine icon (*points to icon on this post*) I knew I wanted to make something with that idea and that image. But when I go on an icon-making spree, I'll just select an image-folder on my computer (like "Potter" or "Johnny" or something) and flick through, opening up any image that looks interesting and then futzing with it. Not all of them will turn into icons, but it's all fun.
For the purpose of this demonstration, I opened my Orlando folder more or less at random, and selected a picture:
Ain't he strange so very like Johnny pretty?
Cropping
Icons are, of course, 100x100 pixels. (They don't have to be. They can be smaller than that. Sometimes you'll want to experiment with smaller concepts, or non-square things. There are many options. But I usually start out by thinking 100x100.) I set the Cut/Marquee tool to "fixed size" of 100x100 px, and then I start dropping the box onto the image. Nothing helps you see what an icon will look like like actually putting a frame around it.
Personally, I'm a fan of the "artsy" crop. You know, off-centre, cutting off bits of the face, just taking in half the body, only keeping the neck and half an ear. That sorta thing. Your mileage may vary - this is, after all, all about what you think looks good in an icon.
I try a couple of different crops on this picture.
Hmm, yeah, OK. I think I like the first one better conceptually, but I want to fit more of his face in it, a bit more of his chin. It's a bit too truncated the way it is. So I go back to the original picture, and I reduce the size, just a little. It's originally 324x480 pixels: I go down to 243x360 (three-quarters of the original size). And then I do my cropping again.
Yes, much better.
Refining the image
What I want to do here is make the basic image as crisp as I can. "Crisp" meaning not just precise or clear, but also in the sharpest colours and contrast (not too sharp, but just so that it holds its integrity once I start adding on layers).
I've yet to find a set way of crisping up an image. Everything seems to require something different. But the first thing I usually try is going the "Auto Levels" option (under "Image" and "Adjust" in PS6).
Hmm. It's stripped all the pink out of it. I'm not sure about that. I quite liked the rose-coloured-glasses thing. But the more I look at it, the more I think that maybe, the cold light of this works better. It's a fairly cold-light sort of expression. So I decide to keep it. After all, if I decide further on that I don't like it, I can always come back to this point, can't I?
It's still not as vivid as it could be, though. Not as sharp. So what I do next is duplicate the layer, and experiment with setting the blend option to "Soft Light" or "Hard Light".
Hmm. "Hard Light" (on the right) might be just a little bit too stark. (But if I want it starker later on, I can always switch that level to "Hard Light". That's the good thing about levels. You can always twiddle with them later.)
Another thing I'll try, to see if I like the effect, is switching the duplicate layer to greyscale, which can give an interesting result. Under "Image" and "Adjust", I'll go to "Hue/Saturation", and turn the saturation down - somewhere between 80 and 100%, usually, and the lightness up a little - around 25%, usually. (I find that if I just desaturate the level, it's too cloudy and dark.) But remember that you can see what changes are happening to the image as you play. Sometimes I don't turn up the brightness, or I adjust the saturation differently.
This time, I go -80 on the saturation, and 10 on the lightness, and then I set the layer to "Hard Light".
I think I'll keep this one. It's lost a lot of its "natural" colour, you'll notice, and that isn't always the way my base images turn out. But it's not really a worry if it does, because in my later layering, I'll be adding "unnatural" colour, and sometimes you don't want that to clash. (Also, remember, I can always come back and fiddle with this layer if I want to tweak things later.)
Layering up
Now it's time for the fun stuff.
First thing's first: I always throw a dark exclusion layer on there, just to get a starting tint. Under "Layer"/"New Fill Layer", I pick "Solid Colour" and just click OK. (It'll be all-white - mine always is, anyway.) I set the layer to "Exclusion" (which makes things interestingly negative; I frequently get distracted by my love of negative here, but then I move on), and then double-click on the layer (in the layer palette) to bring up the colour-option box again. Now I start playing with various colours, watching how they change the look of the image. Dark "jewel" tones are the best - dark reds, greens, purples, blues. Each sort of exclusion acts a different way on the colours.
(Dark red, purple, green and blue, respectively.)
I, like the rest of the icon-makers in the world, will usually end up going with the dark-blue exclusion layer. It adds that nice sepia-rustic feel, and a touch of blue to the blacks. We're all sheep. But I think it looks nice. Baaa. But on this icon, it's a little bit too yellow for me at the moment. I turn the opacity of the level down a bit. At 60%, I'm happy.
Now what I want is some colour/texture. I usually achieve this by bringing in other images. The first thing I'll do is go back to the original image and see if there's any patches of colour/texture I can use from that. I grab a section at the top-right of the original image.
And I paste it as a new layer onto my icon. Now I need to fiddle with the blending to bring my icon-image through. This is always a trial-and-error process, playing with various settings to see what works best.
"Hard Light" @ 100%. Blerk. Too stark.
"Soft Light" @ 100%. Hmm. Interesting. Brings in a little of that pink we lost and provides delicate detail. I like this one. (But I try the others, because maybe I'll like something else better.
"Color Burn" @100%. Always a good bet for burnt edges. It's frequently a bit too messy though. But sometimes that's what you're looking for.
"Overlay" @ 100%. This gives a very interesting effect on this image (not always the case). I like this, I think I'll keep it. For now.
I also flip through every other blend-option, just to see what they throw up. I'm not a theorist, so I have no idea what the various options actually do in terms of an image. I experiment with everything, just to make sure I'm not missing a really interesting possibility. Depending on what you're blending in, sometimes "Hue" or "Color" can give really interesting effects, especially with turned-down opacity.
Anyway, onwards. I'm nowhere near finished with this picture. I want more texture on it, and I've expended the possibilities of the original image, so I go hunting through my image directories, looking for something interesting. Icon-bases are great for this - I love the ones that disappearicons made, but I noticed that she's locked those away, which is kinda sad. Texture-brushes can also be really useful, but since they only work in one colour, they're not as useful for the adding colour-texture to a thing, so they're usually my last option. But never underestimate the texture-potential of basic images. I have a whole directory full of stuff that's really just colour and movement. From that directory, I pull out:
And then I paste it in over the icon. That's right, the whole thing. That way I can move it around until I find a section that I think looks interesting, and if it doesn't work out, I can just move the image again, looking for another good bit. While I'm doing this, I'm obviously also playing with the blend-options and opacity of the layer. I'm just trial-and-erroring until I find something that I like.
Top-left of the pasted image, Hard Light @ 50%. Like the colour-texture, not sure about the scratches over Orli's face.
Top of the picture (Icarus's face and arm), Color Burn @ 100%. I like the red-burn of Orli's profile. As per usual it's a little messy, but I think I really like this one a lot.
Top-right, Color @ 100%. Pretty, but blah.
Mid-right, Hard Light @ 100%. I actually really like what the colour-work's doing here. It's vibrant, it works for me. The problem, of course, is that it's really obscuring the line of the original picture, which is no good at all.
But there's something I can do about that!
I go back to my second layer - the one that was a copy of the original picture, but that I desaturated, remember? I duplicate that layer again (this time I call it "Outline", just to help me talk about it more easily). Now, I move that layer up to the top of the image. (Various ways of doing this. Under "Layer" and "Arrange" pick "Move to Front". Or just drag the layer up to the top on the layer palette.) Now I desaturate it completely (under "Image" and "Adjust"). For now, it's still on "Hard Light", which is what the original duplicate layer was on.
I'd like to make it a little starker, because it's a bit hazy and mucky like it is. So (still on my "Outline" layer), I adjust the contrast up a bit (under "Image", "Adjust", "Brightness/Contrast"). Experimenting as I watch the effect on the image, I eventually decide on 0% brightness, 40% contrast, to up the starkness, but keep the shadows around the edges.
It's still a bit messy around his profile though, isn't it? That's probably because the bit that I chose from the Icarus-picture was a bit messy around there. Trying to fix that, I go back to my Icarus-layer, and try using some Blur/Smooth filters. A Gaussian blur set on 2 gets me a smoother image.
But you know what? (I suddenly realise, looking at this picture). Apart from the border-part on the top and right sides, you can't see anything of that initial texture layer I used, with Orlando's hair in the bottom left. Hmm. I try moving that layer up one (so it's now above the Icarus-layer) to see what happens.
Whoo fucking hoo. Big difference. Just stripped off some of my fun colour texture. Growl. I futz around a little with the blending options and the opacity, trying to see if I can work it in better. But it doesn't work, so I go back to where I was, with it completely unnoticable, basically. (Sometimes these things happen. It's a process, that's my philosophy.) Also, I can always turn the visibility of that layer off (the little eye next to the layer on the palette) to see whether it's actually having any effect on the image at all.
With and without that layer.
So it is having an effect. It's lightening things up a little. OK. That's nice. We'll leave it in there.
I'm feeling pretty happy with this as an icon now. Sure, it's not very heavy-layered, but that's just how the process has turned out this time 'round. My final step in texturising is to see whether I can jazz up the colours further with some interesting gradient layers. "Layer"/"New Layer"/"Gradient", and I usually set it to 40% to start with - so that I can see through it and how the image matches up with the gradient. Then I choose an interesting gradient. Some of my favourites are the purple-to-orange on, and the tones-of-brown one (I think it's called "copper"). I don't have very many "specialty" gradients made by other people, because frankly, anything I want for a specific icon I can custom-make myself in the gradient editor.
However, because this is a light, simple icon (not a lot of texture), gradients are really just looked pretty silly on it.
So stuff that. I'm happy with it like it was. I'll move on to the final step.
Finishing off
Two parts to finalising an icon - border and text.
The first thing I usually do at this point is to combine all the layers, or "Flatten Image". The reason I do this is because I like to check what a finished icon's going to look like by increasing the "Canvas Size" to put some white-space around it, and if all the other layers are hanging over the edge, it mucks things up. However, that's just my personal preference. Whatever you do, don't flatten the layers before you're satisfied with the image, because once they're flattened, you can't go back and twiddle them!
With borders, there's really two options - brushes or a simple stroke. ("Simple stroke" being when I select the whole image, and then right-click and select "stroke". I can do it in any colour, thickness, blending option... it creates a very simple and subtle border if done in "Soft Light", which still provides a border.) Sometimes my texturising of the icon will have me given you "natural" borders, especially if I was using icon-bases. Not the case here. So I head for my icon-border brushes first. Using the eye-dropper tool, I select a colour from the icon - a dark orange from his forehead. I create a new layer for using the brushes on - that way if I stuff up, I can get rid of it easily! And then I try various brushes out, playing with the blending options and the opacity as well (I always do that, had you noticed?).
I come to the conclusion that that orange is far too light. Not working at all. I switch to a darker brown, also lifted off the image with the eye-dropper. Ah, that looks better.
Now, text time. I usually start out using the same colour for the text as I used for the border - shoes and purse, as it were. Placement of text is the most important thing. Almost more important that what you say, really, but that's just my rampant aesthete talking. Text should not impede the image, but draw attention to it, frame it, draw the eye into the icon. (OMG, I sound like my grade nine art teacher or something.) In this icon, the obvious places for text are in the whitepace on the left, or on his face to the right of the profile.
But text saying what? Usually I'm thinking of what to say while I'm making the icon - the music that's playing helps, but also the feel of the icon as it's evolving, and I can get an idea of what I'd like to say on/through the icon. This time I've been a little distracted, but looking at it now... it's all about the fire tones, isn't it? Burnt and burning. Fire, purging, ascetic... stuff like that. Hmm, what about "boy on fire"? That also has nice resonance with how Orlando's so popular these days.
So, I choose the bottom right for the text, and I know what I want to say. And now we come to font-choice. Oh lord, it's enough to mire a girl in indecision for all time, innit? I am such a font-whore. Because this is an elegant-simplicity sort of icon, I go with a cursive font to start with.
Urf. No, this is not working at all. Problem with cursive is that it needs to be pretty big to be entirely legible, and the curling ups and downs (on y and f) get in the way and makes it all a mess. Taking up too much space on the icon as well. Plan B, definitely. I decide to try small caps instead, and go to my stalwart Arial.
Hmm. A bit too simple, really. But if I make it a serif-font, like Georgia...
Still a bit too simple. I think what's required here is a blending of two fonts, to give it a little more interest (since the icon itself is pretty simple, make the text more complicated!) There needs to be a certain amount of difference between two fonts used together, I think. I'll usually use a "plain" font and a "fancy" font when I'm doing this, effectively turning certain words into highlight words. I decide I'll make "fire" into a highlight word, so it's the one that gets the "fancy" font. I flick through my fonts looking for something I like, and settle on Porcelain (another staple). In contrast, I decide that the serif font is too similar, and switch "boy on" back to Arial, and then to Arial Black to bring it out more.
I've brought the "boy on" down onto one line, and have it bracketing the up of the "f". I also move the text up a little, to make sure the down of the "f" is also "in shot". (I know a lot of people make icons with bits of the letter hanging over the edges, but you need to be careful with it - if you cut off the down of a letter, sometimes it's impossible to tell what the letter's supposed to be, and people should be looking at your icons twice because they're gorgeous, not because they can't understand what the hell it's saying.) Another important point is the leading on the text (set in the "character" panel - turn it on if you don't have it showing, under "Window") - I adjust it to make sure that the "boy on" is sitting just above the "fire" - not too close, but so there's that slight overlap. I want the text to hang together as a cohesive block, not be miles apart.
But still, I'm not sure there's enough interest in the text. I try making the "fire" a different colour, going back to that orange I discarded for the borders.
Yeah. I like that.
Other things I might experiment with at this stage include the ubiquitous "small text". Unreadable tiny text can provide a visual element that fills a space but doesn't actually snag attention trying to read it. In this case, I've got that whitespace in the top left that I'm not sure about. It's kinda fun and stark and clean like it is, but maybe it'd look better overall as an icon if I put something in there.
So I have a dabble with the tiny text. I'm a wanker like this, so I like to have it mean something. In this case, I use some lyrics from a Kittie song, because I think they're a little appropriate: "Sit and watch me burn... crucify than learn." Of course, they don't really have to mean anything to anyone but me, because I'm the only one who can see them...
I really like that. Is it just because I'm a sheep on the whole tiny text thing? Probably (baaa). But I think it balances up the icon, and makes it look overall grand.
So that's it. As a final step, I move the text layers so they're underneath the border layer. It doesn't make any appreciable difference to the look of the icon, but it's a just-in-case. I don't always do that either - sometimes keeping the text on top of the border gives an icon a nice "breaking out" look.
But that's it. That's a finished icon, Dee-style. Now I save it: "Save for Web" - ALWAYS. Otherwise it doesn't always turn out the best. I usually save icons as jpgs at 80%, because they're small enough that the extra quality's worth it, I think.
And then I close it, open another picture, and start all over again. I swear, it's quicker to just do it than it is to talk about it a lot. *G*
Addendums
It is a process, and an awful lot depends on the images I use during the "texturising up" of the image. For example, other icons I could have made from the same basic image:
using two disappearicons bases, a "copper" gradient on color burn, and a simple stroke border.
using a purple swirl image, a "orange-to-purple" gradient on hard light at 40%, and a soft-light stroke border.
using two parts of a Stephanie Pui-Mun Law painting, a blue-toned gradient on color burn at 60%, and the ubiquitous stroke border.
The KEY is experimentation. Play, play, play and love thy Photoshop. Mwah.
THE END - congratulations if you made it, have a gold star.