I am sure this won't be helpful at all, lol. I find it confusing and I made this icon.
Haha! :D
Thank you for writing this up! Iconmaking is a lot of experimenting, that's normal, I think.
The process may be confusing for someone who's never made an icon, but it's not confusing for me. What I'm taking from this is not to be afraid to make the center of the icon dark (I never would have dared do that), and that you use manual white and black blobs for the lighting (I do that too).
What I was most interested in is how you get your subjects' skin so smooth and the subject not to look too sharp against the background. I think the combination of smart sharpen and blur is what's doing the trick there. I am using a variant of that, but so far have always failed to get my icons to look as smooth as yours. (So that's something to keep experimenting with, hee. :D)
Thank you very much, this is great and makes me want to try new things! (which is the whole point of ask the maker, right? :D)
Thank you also for the textures. I have a ton of textures (way over 1000, yep), but I still don't have all of these. I'll snag some!
and the subject not to look too sharp against the background I use gaussian blur a lot as I resize the image, from 500px to 175px, aswell as a little topaz. 175 is the size I cut background from my icons. I use the lasso tool to delete most of the background and then just a small soft brush, and my graphics tab pen with pen pressure on.
Smoothing skin manually with the blur tool is mega helpful at times too. Obviously topaz does a good job of flattening skin, but I reckon you can get the same results with a mixture of reduce noise (? is that the right PS term) and gradient maps.
I'm glad it is helpful for you, and given you new ideas! That makes me happy. :)
I don't have topaz, I usually use Smart Blur and smooth out the hard lines with a soft brush. It's not perfect, but it works fine for cheeks. Not at all for outlines, though. :/
I never resize the image at all - I mean, the first thing I do is resize down to 100x100 and then I work at that size. I hate it when I lose details on downsizing, so it's the first thing I do (after masking, okay).
Oh, and I've been meaning to ask what the advantage of converting your text to a smart object is? I've never used them.
Oh, and I've been meaning to ask what the advantage of converting your text to a smart object is? I've never used them.
I find converting text to a smart object makes it easier to shape. Like, stretching the text or going for a certain shape. Tbh, I'm not majorly clued up on text, but other than using control + t, that's how I make shapes and angles with text.
Haha! :D
Thank you for writing this up! Iconmaking is a lot of experimenting, that's normal, I think.
The process may be confusing for someone who's never made an icon, but it's not confusing for me. What I'm taking from this is not to be afraid to make the center of the icon dark (I never would have dared do that), and that you use manual white and black blobs for the lighting (I do that too).
What I was most interested in is how you get your subjects' skin so smooth and the subject not to look too sharp against the background. I think the combination of smart sharpen and blur is what's doing the trick there. I am using a variant of that, but so far have always failed to get my icons to look as smooth as yours. (So that's something to keep experimenting with, hee. :D)
Thank you very much, this is great and makes me want to try new things! (which is the whole point of ask the maker, right? :D)
Thank you also for the textures. I have a ton of textures (way over 1000, yep), but I still don't have all of these. I'll snag some!
Reply
I use gaussian blur a lot as I resize the image, from 500px to 175px, aswell as a little topaz. 175 is the size I cut background from my icons. I use the lasso tool to delete most of the background and then just a small soft brush, and my graphics tab pen with pen pressure on.
Smoothing skin manually with the blur tool is mega helpful at times too. Obviously topaz does a good job of flattening skin, but I reckon you can get the same results with a mixture of reduce noise (? is that the right PS term) and gradient maps.
I'm glad it is helpful for you, and given you new ideas! That makes me happy. :)
Reply
I never resize the image at all - I mean, the first thing I do is resize down to 100x100 and then I work at that size. I hate it when I lose details on downsizing, so it's the first thing I do (after masking, okay).
Oh, and I've been meaning to ask what the advantage of converting your text to a smart object is? I've never used them.
Reply
I find converting text to a smart object makes it easier to shape. Like, stretching the text or going for a certain shape. Tbh, I'm not majorly clued up on text, but other than using control + t, that's how I make shapes and angles with text.
Reply
Leave a comment