Because we've all got to start somewhere!
All right guys, here's an easy peasy tutorial for absolute newcomers to GIMP, and icon-making in general. We'll be learning resizing and rescaling, how to get to grips with the basic GIMP interface, and how to make your colours look deceptively professional! Hopefully this will be useful to noobs looking for somewhere to start, because God knows, I could have done with something like this when I started. :)
We'll be going from
to
. Everyone sitting comfortably?
Whenever I make icons, I always start out in Paint first. The pros probably use GIMP all the way through, but I like to use Paint, and I'm going to pass on my lazy habits to the rest of you. :)
Also please note that because I captured all these steps with Paint, the quality of the actual icon isn't accurate until the final result!
We're starting with this image of Claire Danes on the cover of Vanity Fair. Take a screencap of your image (it's the button on your keyboard to the right of the F keys), and then paste it into Paint.
The first tip for the icon noob is not to be put off by what you think are obstacles like that socking great Vanity Fair title in the background. The best icons are always creative with the way they crop images, and you don't always have to have your subject in the centre.
First you need to crop the part of the image you want, in a rough square shape. The select button is the one I've highlighted in red, in case you were in any doubt :)
So you can see the part of the image I've selected for my icon. Now copy this, open up a new file, and paste it.
Step one complete! However, unless you're particularly talented, chances are, you won't have cropped a perfect square, so this is what I do to make sure my width and height are the same:
Have a look at the thumbnail of the image in the folder you've saved it to. Windows thumbnails are 100x100 (the same size an an LJ icon), so if your image is a perfect square, it ought to fill the thumbnail perfectly. As you can see, mine doesn't. So go back to your saved file and crop it just a touch.
Depending on where you want to crop it, you don't necessarily have to select the image and repaste it - you could just snip a bit off the bottom or the right-hand corner, where I've highlighted. You might need to keep cropping and checking your thumbnail until it's perfect, but it'll save you a lot of bother when you get to GIMP.
There you go - a perfect square.
Now open GIMP.
The little toolbar is the main one, from which you open up your icon in progress. For our purposes today, you can ignore that toolbar once you've opened your icon - we'll be working entirely from the icon's own options.
The first thing you need to do is scale your image down so it's 100x100, the maximum size for LJ icons. This is the path you need to take on the toolbar to get there:
That should bring this up:
See the little chain symbol? Leave that linked for now - it means that when you alter either the width or height, the other will adjust automatically to stay in proportion. Despite the cropping we did in Paint, though, your icon might still be out by one pixel - if it is, just click on the chain symbol to unlock it, and make the necessary adjustment. Then OK it.
A really useful trick is to auto-adjust the colour levels in your image - this can give it a cleaner, crisper, more vibrant look. However, 25% of the time, auto-adjusting the colour levels either doesn't do a lot for whatever reason, or it actually gives a less desirable effect than the original. It's up to you to decide whether you like it better adjusted or not.
Don't worry about anything except for the highlighted 'auto' button. Click it once, and you should notice the difference straight away, if you have the 'preview' button checked. If you're not sure which you prefer, just uncheck that button to see it in its virgin state again. When you're happy, press OK.
Now the only thing left to do is to adjust the contrast and brightness, to really make the colours pop.
Almost all images look better with increased contrast. Some look better brighter, some look better darker - just use your judgment, play around with them until you get an image you like. Be careful not to yank the contrast up too much or your subject will become overly pixelated, and be wary of skintones getting too yellow as well.
All that remains now is to save your finished article! Make sure to click 'save as' though, not 'save' - it'll give you an option to improve the quality of your save from 85% to 100%.
Et voila!
With just this little bit of knowledge, you can create really nice icons - in fact, I hardly use anything else (aside from text). The trick to creating a good icon is clever cropping, and knowing how to get the most out of your colours, I think.
I hope you found this tutorial helpful and user-friendly - let me know how you get on!
We'll be going from
to
. Everyone sitting comfortably?
Whenever I make icons, I always start out in Paint first. The pros probably use GIMP all the way through, but I like to use Paint, and I'm going to pass on my lazy habits to the rest of you. :)
Also please note that because I captured all these steps with Paint, the quality of the actual icon isn't accurate until the final result!
We're starting with this image of Claire Danes on the cover of Vanity Fair. Take a screencap of your image (it's the button on your keyboard to the right of the F keys), and then paste it into Paint.
The first tip for the icon noob is not to be put off by what you think are obstacles like that socking great Vanity Fair title in the background. The best icons are always creative with the way they crop images, and you don't always have to have your subject in the centre.
First you need to crop the part of the image you want, in a rough square shape. The select button is the one I've highlighted in red, in case you were in any doubt :)
So you can see the part of the image I've selected for my icon. Now copy this, open up a new file, and paste it.
Step one complete! However, unless you're particularly talented, chances are, you won't have cropped a perfect square, so this is what I do to make sure my width and height are the same:
Have a look at the thumbnail of the image in the folder you've saved it to. Windows thumbnails are 100x100 (the same size an an LJ icon), so if your image is a perfect square, it ought to fill the thumbnail perfectly. As you can see, mine doesn't. So go back to your saved file and crop it just a touch.
Depending on where you want to crop it, you don't necessarily have to select the image and repaste it - you could just snip a bit off the bottom or the right-hand corner, where I've highlighted. You might need to keep cropping and checking your thumbnail until it's perfect, but it'll save you a lot of bother when you get to GIMP.
There you go - a perfect square.
Now open GIMP.
The little toolbar is the main one, from which you open up your icon in progress. For our purposes today, you can ignore that toolbar once you've opened your icon - we'll be working entirely from the icon's own options.
The first thing you need to do is scale your image down so it's 100x100, the maximum size for LJ icons. This is the path you need to take on the toolbar to get there:
That should bring this up:
See the little chain symbol? Leave that linked for now - it means that when you alter either the width or height, the other will adjust automatically to stay in proportion. Despite the cropping we did in Paint, though, your icon might still be out by one pixel - if it is, just click on the chain symbol to unlock it, and make the necessary adjustment. Then OK it.
A really useful trick is to auto-adjust the colour levels in your image - this can give it a cleaner, crisper, more vibrant look. However, 25% of the time, auto-adjusting the colour levels either doesn't do a lot for whatever reason, or it actually gives a less desirable effect than the original. It's up to you to decide whether you like it better adjusted or not.
Don't worry about anything except for the highlighted 'auto' button. Click it once, and you should notice the difference straight away, if you have the 'preview' button checked. If you're not sure which you prefer, just uncheck that button to see it in its virgin state again. When you're happy, press OK.
Now the only thing left to do is to adjust the contrast and brightness, to really make the colours pop.
Almost all images look better with increased contrast. Some look better brighter, some look better darker - just use your judgment, play around with them until you get an image you like. Be careful not to yank the contrast up too much or your subject will become overly pixelated, and be wary of skintones getting too yellow as well.
All that remains now is to save your finished article! Make sure to click 'save as' though, not 'save' - it'll give you an option to improve the quality of your save from 85% to 100%.
Et voila!
With just this little bit of knowledge, you can create really nice icons - in fact, I hardly use anything else (aside from text). The trick to creating a good icon is clever cropping, and knowing how to get the most out of your colours, I think.
I hope you found this tutorial helpful and user-friendly - let me know how you get on!