This tutorial was made for Photoshop 7 on a PC, though parts of it
should apply to different versions or programs.
OK, let's start with a picture. I
picked a Janet picture from Heroes 1, because of her poise and expression.
Taken from
Beneath the Surface.
First, crop it down to size: the usual
100x100. Select the crop tool and type 100 px in the width and
height boxes up top. REFERENCE.
NOW...I could do a whole tutorial just on how
to crop a picture. Luckily, it's already been done.
Quebelly's Icon Cropping Tutorial I think is a great inspiration on how
to get unusual and unique perspectives on the same old pictures, though she
does use a different technique. Have fun cropping! It's my
favorite part. I often go way out on a limb with strange perspectives
that cut off a lot...but to each their own. If everyone cropped like
me it would be a very boring world indeed.
So the gist of it is, click on a point, drag
the opposite corner to where you want it to be, and release. You can
then grab any corner and resize it as you like, or grab anywhere in the box
and move the entire box. Right click, and press Crop to crop it
(it will automatically make the cropped space 100x100, then), or press
Cancel to try again. REFERENCE.
I came out with this:
Because I'm paranoid and always want to keep my original
just in case, I always duplicate this background layer and work on the
duplicate, but that really isn't necessary.
NOW, for the gist of the tutorial, my two favorite tools:
Levels and Curves. Both can be found in your menu, under Image -->
Adjustments.
REFERENCE. They both do about the same thing, but in different
ways: they adjust the brightness and contrast. I feel they give you
better control and better results than the Brightness/Contrast tool.
Let's start with Levels. In the pop-up menu, you'll
notice a graph with little tabs underneath it.
REFERENCE. You'll
be messing with the little tabs on the left, middle, and right, and
nothing else. The bottom light spectrum adjusts the overall darkness
and lightness, but this won't give you the contrast you're going for.
Back to the graph tabs. If you grab the left
tab and pull it towards the middle of the graph, it will make the
darker parts darker. The right tab will make the lighter parts
lighter. And the middle tab will change the proportion of
light-to-dark. I generally move both end tabs in a little to up
the contrast, then play with the middle tab to get the right amount of
light. I usually want to make the pictures lighter rather than
darker, so both the right and middle tabs end up further to the left
than usual.
Here's my
final settings, and here's how the icon looks:
Now usually, I only use either Levels or Curves, but for
the purposes of consolidation I'm going to do both in this tutorial.
In the
Curves pop-up menu you're going to be concerned with the line going
perpendicularly through the graph (
REFERENCE).
Grab the line in the middle and move it around. The ends will remain
attached, so you'll just be developing a curve in the middle. When
the line is curved above perfect perpendicular, it will be lighter.
Below perpendicular, it will be darker. As said, I'm usually trying
to lighten pictures, so I normally go above perpendicular.
Here's my
final settings, and here's how the icon looks:
Now we're going to ruin all of our wonderful work by
covering it up *L*. I've covered what I wanted to cover with Levels and Curves, so now I'm just going to go wild and see what comes out. For
this part, I'm going to use a stock photo I downloaded off of
Getty
Images:
Click and drag this picture onto your icon, above the
other layers.. Position it as you like. Here's mine:
I played with different blending options and finally set
it to Screen, which gives you this:
It doesn't look like much now, but it gives it an interesting texture
and brightens it. Next, duplicate the stock picture layer, set it
to Normal, and move it around, so you have a different area over
the picture. Here's mine:
Set this layer to Hard Light (again, this
required some playing to see what worked best). Now we have this:
Now we're getting somewhere. You can't see Janet
too well, so duplicate her picture and place the duplicate layer over
the rest. Set it to Soft Light, and you should have this:
I don't quite like the pink/purple hue this has given
it, so desaturate this top layer (Image --> Adjustments -->Desaturate).
REFERENCE. Now you should have
this:
Now the contrast is a bit overpowering, so lower the
opacity of that top layer to 66%.
Now for text. The blue inspired me. I'm using
"Deepest Blue". Using the eyedropper tool, I selected a deep blue
from the icon (from the upper left corner). RGB code #103774 (
REFERENCE).
Select the text tool and write DEEPEST in all caps, font
Apple Garamond
(available at
Dafont)
at size 10. Highlight it and Bold from the pull-down menu next to
the font name. Make sure your anti-alias is on Crisp (
REFERENCE).
Now select a deeper blue with the eyedropper tool (mine came
from the lower right, RGB code #02005B). With the text tool, write
"BLUE" all in caps, size 16 with the font Base 02 (also available
from Dafont).
REFERENCE. Position this text layer
just below and to the right of "DEEPEST". You should have this:
Now, to finish it off, apply a basic one pixel border.
Set your Foreground Color to the blue we used for "BLUE" - #02005B.
Create a new layer on top of the rest, and name it Border. Now,
press Ctrl-A, or alternately go to Select --> All (REFERENCE).
This will create a selection around the entire icon (REFERENCE).
Then go to Edit --> Stroke (REFERENCE),
set the width to 1 px and the location as Center (or Inside;
since it's just a 1 pixel border it doesn't matter).
REFERENCE. Hit OK, deselect, and
you're done! Here's the finished product:
Here's what your layers palette should look like:
I usually save my finished icon by going to File --> Save
for Web... and selecting JPEG with max quality.
Well, I hope this tutorial has given you some ideas.
This is by no means THE way to make icons: it's not even the way I usually
make mine. The most important thing is to have fun and experiment!
I had to back up and start several steps over again just doing this one.
The more you try different things, the quicker you will learn what works and
what doesn't. Have fun!
This tutorial was made by Memento1 on 4/10/04.
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if you liked it!
