Icon Making: A General Guide
Program: Photoshop CS, but mostly translateable to all
Difficulty: Beginner, but basically as hard as you want
Translatable: Yes
PSD Included: No
The basics of: Cropping; Preparing; Colouring; Textures; Font
Using this as a visual example:
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Firstly, I’ll begin by saying that I’m not pretending that any of this is the tight and proper way to go about making icons; far from it. And that’s because not. There’s not one right way, as it’s about creativity and expression. But hopefully this guide might provide a few tips on some of the techniques of icon-making, and I do hope some of you will find it at least somewhat useful.
Crop; Preparation; Colouring; Textures; Font
I’m going to assume that everyone knows the very basics of navigating PS or alternate programs for this tutorial. E.g. new canvas, paint brush tool, eraser, etc.
You also do not need to follow the order I do, this is how I find it easiest to make icons, but I’ll often completely change it up to do something different. I cannot stress enough EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT. (Hands up if you get the reference, Y/Y? =P)
When choosing your images I advise high quality screencaps or stills wherever possible. It will just make the icon look better quality, and they’re much easier to work with.
I’ll take this Doctor Who cap and make a really simple icon to visually demonstrate what I’m talking about here.
When cropping, try and do something unique that has meaning or emotion; but don’t fall into the trap of doing something so original and different that it looks wrong and out of place. Some makers can pull this off, but most others can’t. Experimentation is brilliant, but if it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to scrap it and try again. Often a safe center-crop can be made to stand out by other elements like colouring or textures, so don’t overdo it. Less is often more.
In my icon, I took a simple crop of both River and Amy, then used the clone tool brush to extend the background up about 10 pixels. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
When it comes to preparing your base, it will really depend on the image. I often duplicate my base and set to screen and change the opacity down, then copy merge + paste and set to soft light. If it lacks contrast, I might use overlay. If it’s too bright I lower or remove the screen layer. Preparing the base is mainly just to brighten and add contrast to give the image depth.
In my icon, I duplicated the base and set to screen 70%, then copy merged + paste and set to soft light at 75%.
When colouring an icon, I find it’s often easiest to use mostly colours already present in an image. I’ve had colouring of 50 layers though, and I’m not going into all that here. My suggestion would be to experiment with all your adjustments, like colour balance, levels, selective colouring, and vibrance. If you have vibrance layers on your version of PS, use them. They are brilliant. Otherwise, play around with all different effects. Many other makers have done fancy colouring and psd tuts, so check out icon_coloring for more information.
In my icon I used a vibrance layer and turned both options to 40. I then added a colour balance layer, turning up the magentas and yellow. I also created another soft light, and made Amy a little more yellow, as she was far too pink in comparison with River.
Now the fun part: textures. Btw, do not organise your textures how I do. I am a messy person, as are the multitude of texture folders I have strewn across every hard drive and flash drive I own. I now think some sort of system would be helpful, but it’s too late for me. So I just usually go through a few folders till I find something I think might work and try it out on different layer modes. Once again, experiment with all sorts of modes, obviously soft light and lighten, but also colour burn, multiply, screen, overlay, etc. It surprising what can often work.
In my example I added to textures one by midnight_road the other terempaty
I then copy merged and pasted. I then added a quick adjustment with curves and selective colouring, and a couple of other layers.
Now you can leave it at that, or add font. Font and I have a very love/hate relationship. If you can’t think of something clever that fits the icon, it’s best not to bother trying. You’re probably better off looking at makers like exp0se for text guides. But the basic fonts I use are times new roman, folks black, valken, cooper black, league gothic, and for hand-written christopherhand, commotion business and levi marker. There’s a few others too, but those are the ones I know I’ve used relatively recently on icons.
For mine, I added very creative font, you’ll never see that written on a Doctor Who icon ever. When choosing font colour, it’s best to use the dropper tool to select a colour that’s been used somewhere on the icon already, so that way it will be blend in. Also try moving it around, different positions look better than others, as demonstrated below.
And yay, you now have a finished icon. When saving, always use png format, as it’s better quality than jpg.
And my apologies for the 2 minute icon.
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Also, would you like to see future tutorials from me? And if so, would you rather a more specific tutorial, rather than a general guide?
Comments and questions here at mental_ability