Tutorial 5: A Few Icon-Making Tips

[applepips]

Note: This is a tutorial I'd made for someone on Tumblr a while back. It deals with very basic icon-making tips. I've been meaning to post it here but I kept forgetting to do so. :/

Note : This guide assumes that you are just starting out, icon-making wise and know a little about it.  This is not a hard and fast set of rules, merely a collection of tips that I have learned over the years.

1. A good crop makes for an interesting icon.

There are two ways to crop. Either you crop your cap itself down to the desired crop, or you can create a crop by pasting your screen cap onto a new canvas (I use 500 x 500 px or less) and then dragging your screen cap around till I find the crop I want. I personally recommended the second way because of the greater freedom of movement it allows you.

I over use centre-crops a lot myself because 1. I am lazy and 2. I like them. There's nothing wrong with centre crops, however, there are plenty of ways to crop an icon. You just dont have to stick with one.

Examples :

Centre Crop --> Close Crop -->

Can you see how much visual interest the second icon has, just because the crop zooms in on the subject's face?

For more cropping tips, pls go hear and read this beautiful tutorial by a_fast_machine.

2. Re-size in increments.

If your cap size is 1000 and you want to get it down to 100, then do not re-size it in one shot. That is the easiest way to lose quality. Instead, re-size in increments. On an untouched cap, there’s not going to be much of a difference. But if you are going to re-size a coloured cap in one shot, all the colour artifact in the world is going to show up on the icon, which can really ruin an icon. So always re-size in increments. Your cap will thank you for it

3. Layer-Masks Are Your Friends

When making either icons or graphics, naturally you are going to use a variety of adjustment layers to get the colouring you want. But, the more you process a cap, the more colour artifact it develops. So assuming you have used a Selective Colour Layer or even a Curves Layer, and you have turned those layers up to eleven, on certain places on your icon, you will notice clumps of jagged colour pixels. How do you get rid of those? Simple, use a layer mask to mask them away.

Examples:

- This example has a Vibrance layer where the Vibrance has been pushed to 100 and the Saturation is pretty high. However, while the colour of the icon has improved, can you see how orange-ish her skin has become?

- This layer has a Vibrance layer where I have masked away most of Vibrance from her skin. Because of the layer mask, I can still have her hair looking bright and yellow, while her skin looks normal and pink.

If you are new to layer masks or baffled by the concept of them, here is a pretty nifty guide to get you started. :)

4. Save as PNG.

Some people might tell you that saving icons as jpegs is cool but NO, it never is. PNG’s preserve quality while jpeg quality degrades over time until your icon is just a cluster of ugly looking pixels. :/



5. Gradients

Are the best lighting sources that exist. And you can find them within your graphic program ( for PS and PSP). Slap a gradient onto your icon and you can create a lovely screen cap/icon which has great shadow play. Other than acting as lighting sources, gradients can also amp up or decrease the colour in your screen cap. Play around with them aplenty.

Examples:

Without Black and White Gradient -->

With Black and White Gradient (duplicated 3 times and set on softlight) -->

6. Refine Selection

After you have selected an object you want to cut out, always refine your selection. I see way too many cutouts that are made jaggedly without the selection being refined ( in both icons and picspams). Jagged cutouts are not nice because when they are resized, those flaws become even more visible. Wherever your selection tab is located in your graphics program ( I can speak  for only PSP and PS),  there is an option known as Modify, under which you can smoothen your selection, expand it or contract it as need be. There is also Refine Selection in PS which allows you to see how how the selection is affected based on the sliders you push.

Examples:

Without Refining --> With Refining -->

If you see the cutout in the second example, you will see that with the selection having been refined, the cutout looks a lot softer and more natural. In the first one, it looks harsh, sharp and jagged.


7. Practice, Practice, Practice and Explore

Honestly, the only way to get better is practice and be curious about your program. There is a ton of stuff you can do with your program, you just need to fiddle with every  button and layer and be curious. Look at other graphic makers for inspiration but dont be directly inspired by them ( that's just copying which is not cool). In short, practice, explore and check out your favourite makers. Very few people wake up with mad skills over night. All the graphic makers you admire were poo once. They got better only with practice.
Also, reading tutorials obsessively with definitely help you improve and refine your skills.

icon_talk has a bunch of tutorials under the Ask The Maker Masterlist which is located on the left-hand sidebar of the page. Check them all out and go through them .

good_tutorial too is a wellspring of great tutorials.

fan_cifully also has a excellent list of tutorials here.