Making Icons

Moderators: Moderator, Global Moderator

Post Reply
Josh
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 0
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2004 2:54 pm

Making Icons

Post by Josh »

Making Icons using Photoshop CS\' Premade Shapes
By Dren T. Martin

[attachment=1608]attachment[/attachment]

Yep here I am again giving you another tutorial. I hope this one will allow you to make your own icons so you can sell your icons to other people. Note that I do not go over everything in needs of making any icon. Also, I would not try and use photoshop shapes and sell them as icons because I\'m sure there is some kind of copyright on them through Adobe. Let\'s get started!
  • Open up a 100x100 document for your icon.
  • Press \"U\" (This is the Custom Shape Tool) and in the drop down box at the top of Photoshop select the heart.
  • Draw a good sized heart on your canvas whilst holding the shift key to maintain a proportional heart.
  • In the color box at the top of Photoshop select a good red color. Here\'s mine:
    [attachment=1602]attachment[/attachment]
  • Right click the layer and select \"Rasterize Layer\".
    [attachment=1603]attachment[/attachment]
  • Now let\'s get into some nice blending options. This is what brings the icon to life in a way. Now note this is the effect I like on these type of icons. There are numerous different ways you can achieve a nice looking icon.
  • Tick \"Inner Glow\" and use the following settings:
    [attachment=1604]attachment[/attachment]
  • Now tick \"Stroke\" and make a 1px stroke with a darker red color.
  • Great.. We have our icon now. Maybe we should add a highlight to it. Get out the \"Eliptical Marquee Tool\"
  • Draw a big circle so there is a curved selection over the heart and fill it with white on a new layer.
    [attachment=1605]attachment[/attachment]
  • Great job. Now, CTRL + CLICK on the heart layer. This will select all the contents in the layer you just clicked. So in this case we have a heart selection.
    [attachment=1606]attachment[/attachment]
  • Now we added a stroke to the heart shape so we\'re going to have to include that in our selection also. Right now we\'re one pixel away from it so go to \"Select > Modify > Expand\" and enter in 1 for one pixel.
  • Now let\'s get rid of that excess white we have around the heart. Go to \"Select > Inverse\" and this will select everything outside of the heart shape.
  • Make sure you have the white layer selected and hit the delete key.
  • Great!! Now we have white only on our heart shape.
    [attachment=1607]attachment[/attachment]
  • Set the opacity percent level to something not to dark and not to light.. Just enough to make it seem like a highlight. Here\'s my finished product:
    [attachment=1608]attachment[/attachment]
Last edited by Josh on Sun Oct 23, 2005 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
[align=center]

Image

“If you stop learning, you stop living.” ~Tami Quiring

“It's the rare man who understands the value of a single perfect rose.”

[/align]
Post Reply

Return to “PhotoShop”