Okay, throwing a question out there, to all of you who can actually make icons that are square, aren't blurry and are actually pretty (I'm not even talking about adding texts or playing with colors, yet
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I don' use Paint Shop Pro, I'm afraid. Usually I work with Adobe Photoshop, but GIMP works as well and it's free.
One thing you should try no matter which program you use: Don't do the cropping and resizing in one step. The result is much better, if you do it in two steps. Use the rectangle selection tool and set the options not to fixed size, but to fixed aspect ratio or however it's called in English. Set width and height both to 100px. Now you can select the part of your picture you want and it will automatically select a square. Use Crop Image from the Image menu. After that, use Scale Image from the same menu to resize it to 100x100 pixel.
Well, all picture editing programs should work relatively the same way, except when I try to find options for the cropping tool, I can't find anything. ::glares at 'puter::
Thanks, Kat. I'll give GIMP a try... (And if you hear me screaming in about half an hour, it'll be because I gave up and started kicking my computer instead). :)
Yeah, well, my problem is, I can't find the damn options for the selection tool. I have no idea where I need to go to set the parameters and keep it square, so...
You know what? Life's too short for this. I give up.
Kat does it different than I do, so I may have to try her way. But I do it in 2 steps as well and I have Photoshop (that I illegally downloaded).
Basically, with the big picture that's your original shot, I crop it. The key I've found to cropping is that you have to hold your shift key down, that will automatically cut it into a square. Then, once you've got your square, resize it to 100 X 100.
Some come out well, some come out crappy, but I get a few nice ones this way. And it can be done in GIMP, but I couldn't get my head around GIMP.
You do it basically the same way, just with the shortcut of the Shift instead of setting it to fixed aspect ratio. I don't know if that shortcut is available for all programs, but I hoped the other one would be.
I use the Animation one whether or not I'm actually using the animation function, as it's so much more user friendly. I tend to crop and resize in windows just for super accuracy (you can also do it in Serif) and when it comes to posting the icons, I group the whole frame, copy it, then paste it in paint, saving the image as a PNG. All of my vaguely snazzy icons have been made that way.
I don't think I'm much good at icons but some of my friends are LOL if you want me to seek more advice!
If you want to shrink something without distorting it, hold down Control while you do that. That stops the distortion.
To get something to 100x100 is harder. I don't have any Photoshop programmes but I do have an American Greetings Print card making disk. It's good. It still doesn't like squares but it has a square label maker (!) which I use. And always make sure any options for retaining aspect are ticked.
Thanks! I worked with GIMP and it seems to have done the trick, eventually. Part of the problem is that I don't understand how the software is supposed to work, or what most of the options are for, and if you don't even know *what* you're trying to do, it's not so easy to find. ;-)
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Usually I work with Adobe Photoshop, but GIMP works as well and it's free.
One thing you should try no matter which program you use:
Don't do the cropping and resizing in one step.
The result is much better, if you do it in two steps.
Use the rectangle selection tool and set the options not to fixed size, but to fixed aspect ratio or however it's called in English. Set width and height both to 100px. Now you can select the part of your picture you want and it will automatically select a square.
Use Crop Image from the Image menu.
After that, use Scale Image from the same menu to resize it to 100x100 pixel.
Here you can see how it looks like
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tutorial-quickie-scale.html
There ARE options to do both at once, but the result is much more blurry IMHO, s I prefer to do it the way I explained.
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::glares at 'puter::
Thanks, Kat. I'll give GIMP a try... (And if you hear me screaming in about half an hour, it'll be because I gave up and started kicking my computer instead). :)
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IT looks like a rectangle. And in the Tool options, you can set it to square.
http://www.mardiweb.com/web/psp7/tools/selection/selection.htm
And on the image menu you have "Crop to Selection" (step1) and "Resize"
http://www.mardiweb.com/web/psp7/menus/image/image.htm
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You know what? Life's too short for this. I give up.
Thanks anyway. :)
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Basically, with the big picture that's your original shot, I crop it. The key I've found to cropping is that you have to hold your shift key down, that will automatically cut it into a square. Then, once you've got your square, resize it to 100 X 100.
Some come out well, some come out crappy, but I get a few nice ones this way. And it can be done in GIMP, but I couldn't get my head around GIMP.
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::bangs head on desk::
Thanks, brandy! I'll keep trying anyway. :)
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http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/DrawPlus/default.asp
I use the Animation one whether or not I'm actually using the animation function, as it's so much more user friendly. I tend to crop and resize in windows just for super accuracy (you can also do it in Serif) and when it comes to posting the icons, I group the whole frame, copy it, then paste it in paint, saving the image as a PNG. All of my vaguely snazzy icons have been made that way.
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And thanks; I might give it a try, one day... :)
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If you want to shrink something without distorting it, hold down Control while you do that. That stops the distortion.
To get something to 100x100 is harder. I don't have any Photoshop programmes but I do have an American Greetings Print card making disk. It's good. It still doesn't like squares but it has a square label maker (!) which I use. And always make sure any options for retaining aspect are ticked.
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