q&a post
At the beginning of this month, I created a thread at icon_talk here where people could ask me questions regarding my icons, and I've finally decided to do this now.
Extremely text heavy!
Written in Photoshop CS5. Don't know how it applies to other software.
I. COLORING
First of all, I have to say, how I color my icons isn't really all that special. I use the same method on each and every one of my icons. Different settings, yes, but mostly the same method. I'm not creative enough to do a different one for every single icon I make.
My method changes though. It isn't the same one as when I first started making icons, and it isn't the same one as the gazillion methods I had after that. Once I find a good one, I stick with it. Until I get bored or accidentally find something else.
A while ago I did a tutorial here which is basically still the method I'm using now.
There were a couple icons though that tutorials for were requested, so I'll be explaining what I did to them.
(also, crops may vary because I'm using the original finished icon, but I'm cropping the original pic now)
Asked by hopeitallaway:
to
I remember this cap giving me trouble, but I really wanted to do something with it because the forest is pretty and pretty people running in it is pretty and... well, you get the point. But, just look at it, it's extremely dark, right? And not extremely colorful either.
I always put a yellow Soft Light layer on an icon (see above tutorial), which is usually at 20% opacity, but in this case I put it on around 60% because the colors really needed some yellow to liven up. That wasn't enough though, so there was a Hue/Saturation layer added with the Master Saturation +20, which makes it look a whole lot better. (I'm experimenting right now though and duplicating the yellow Soft Light layer and lowering that opacity isn't looking too bad either!)
Anyway, from that point on you can just fiddle with some Color Balance layers or something else to add a little more yellows and reds and there you have a colorful icon! I just came out with something like this. (I still hate that his face is kinda blurry though, but meh, it's about the coloring right now)
to
Damn you, Merlin caps! Always with the dark and uncolorful things you do! (they do have colorful scenes though, but seems they don't in this case :P) Anyway, there really isn't anything special about this icon's coloring. What I like is the crop though. I tell you, when you get the chance to icon a pretty cap with two people's face on it, try to crop it in a way you see the half of one person's face, and a half of the other person's face. If it looks good, you have a crop! Most times it doesn't look good though, either because the faces are too close together (and the cap's quality isn't that good) or too far away or something, but in this case it worked. Especially with Merlin being all busy scheming in the foreground (in the dark) and a noticably lighter nonsuspecting Morgana in the background. The contrast between the dark and the light skins of the two is the reason I couldn't get this icon to be really colorful. Because when you focus on Merlin looking good, Morgana looks wonky, and if you do it the other way around, Merlin'll look wonky. There were ways to fix that but I'm lazy and I thought it looked good enough as it is. (no one'll be using my icons anymore after this, I swear :P)
Asked by nalazhar:
to
Fun thing about The Vampire Diaries caps - when they're dark, they're dark. But when they're outside, they're COLORS COLORS COLORS (or at least, potential for colorful thinigs!) and nice quality at that. They were that less in season one though, but since season two it's improved. Anyway, even though there are some colorful things in the image, it's still quite dark so that's why there were lot of screen layers involved (2 or so). A simple Hue/Saturation layer with +20 also did the trick and I think that's all the 'special' things I did for this. Remaking it now I ended up with this.
This also goes for this icon.
Asked by lover_of_narnia:
to
Man, Legend of the Seeker caps are a DREAM. A dream, I tell you! They have amazingly choreographed fight scenes, slow motion hairporn, pretty people, amazingly gorgeous scenery, everything is colorful and all caps for it are AMAZING quality. I get mine from orange_corner where they have S2 in 1920x1080px so you know, you can't go wrong with that. This is why I can't stop iconning this show, people. One - I love the show to death. Two - everything I said above. Seriously, the original cap for this icon was this. It's in movement so it's not as sharp but because of the size of the image it's enough.
Now, back to the icon. It's one of my personal favorites, to be honest. The colors worked really well in my opinion, there's negative space that is actually grass and there's Kahlan in her pretty white dress but it's just her silhouette and not her face. So, basically, lots of Hue/Saturation, yellow highlights and red shadows in the Color Balance, enough Levels to make it contrasted enough, an extra added light texture set on Lighten to not have such dark blacks, and there you go!
I realize this was more of a LOTS cap lovefest than an actual tutorial, so I do apologize. But really, most of the work is done by the cap itself. Believe me.
to
Say what you want about Lumen, but she made for some great shots. This one has to be my favorite though. It's her lying down, her hair ends all curly, and the cap is colorful enough to work with. This is also one of those cases in which the cropping can make such a huge difference.
Basically, the same as the above tutorial. Make the colors that are already there pop by Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, enough contrast, and an added light texture. Here are lots of yellows and reds to work with and that's always fun.
II. CROPPING
In case you're still there, and I really hope you are, here's the cropping part which a few people asked questions about.
wandererjulia asked: this could be a very stupid question but how do you crop your icons?
do you work in a great canvas or you prefer to put the cap inside a 100x100 canvas and resize the cap until you're satisfied with the crop?
I'm lazy as hell and I just use the crop tool. It's the easiest and it works just as fine as the other way. I change my Crop Tool settings from the default though, like this:
Crop Guide Overlay - Changed it to Rule Of Thirds, which gives you something like this, which is absolutely perfect for center crops and the like.
Opacity - Needs to be dark, obviously, but not too dark so that you can still see what you're cutting off of the original image.
Resolution - (which is the option you see when you're not in the middle of cropping something) Always set to 72. It's what all pixel images work with and it also avoids issues of incorrect font sizes when you're trying to work with text.
If you don't like the crop tool because you can't really play with the crop after it's cropped (like with the Free Transform tool), do not worry because there's always this option.
exp0se asked: I love how you achieve such deep reds in your icons. I'd love some pointers on how you get your icons to be so wonderfully contrasted and rich in colors like red. You're one of the best I've seen at making icons look so vibrant and pretty. :)
Doesn't have anything to do with cropping but it's the only coloring-related question I got so I'm answering it here anyway.
By the way, hi there hon! I love you! :D Ahem. So basically, it's really just always a Color Balance layer at the end (in which I heighten the Red in Shadows and heighten the Yellow in Highlights), those really do the trick. After that one there's always a Levels layer (unless the contrast is already high enough), and change this setting. It usually averages between 10-30 and sometimes higher.
A general cropping guide would be wonderful! Maybe with some of this included?
A. Do you automatically see the crop in your mind when you pick out images, or do you just chose images at random and crop them with no idea or plan behind it?
B. Do you decide on one crop right way, or do you crop the image in different ways before deciding on one.
C. Do you color the image before you crop or the other way around.
D. Do you use the crop tool, the rectangular marque tool/free transform or maybe both? If it's just one, why do you prefer that one over the other?
E. What are your thoughts on the different types of cropping, negative space, close crop, obscure etc. And what are some of your tips on each one, what to look for in images, how to crop to make it look balanced, how to not make it seem awkward, that sort of thing. And maybe you could include some example icon for each category and talk a little bit about how and why you decided to crop each in that particular way?
A. I usually just save pretty caps. Or the ones that look croppable, like half of a person's face behind another person's face or the close-up or the far off ones. Caps are never predictable though. Sometims I look at a cap and think that it's very croppable, but then I try it and it never works out. Or the crop works but the coloring doesn't. And when even black and white doesn't work on it, I just give up. And sometimes caps can surprise you. When you can make a boring cap interesting, you know you've got a good crop.
B. It depends. Sometimes I know right away what I want. Then I do it and get on with it. Sometimes, like above, I have a pretty cap but I'm having trouble on how to crop it, I do try a couple different things. Which is where the History panel comes in handy, hehe.
C. I crop first, then color. If you're using a full-sized cap or even something 200x200, you can't test your 100x100 textures yet in full quality. And even then there's always a chance when cropping it down to the usual 100x100, it might not look as good anymore as they did before. I think it's just a personal preference.
D. The crop tool, as explained in wandererjulia's question.
E. I personally think that, if YOU think a crop's good, then it's good. Here's a couple I'm personally not a fan of though:
1.
The case of: I really want to make a negative space icon of this cap but there's already a background and I can't just smudge it out. Solution: get your Rectangular Marquee tool and extend it that way. Color it and done. Problem is: you can still see where they obviously extended it. What's the trouble in actually trying to hide that somewhat? You can go a long way with some textures and such. I've done such a thing in this one for example:
I mean, it could've been better. Much better. But it's not as noticable anymore, no? That's just what textures and a bit of smudging can do.
2.
Cropping off at the mouth so the rest of their head is visible? I'm not a fan of it. It can look good sometimes, every crop can depending on the cap, but in this case? No.
3.
Sometimes you have a cap but you don't really know how to crop it, so you just crop the whole face and be done with it. I know I've been guilty of this in the past, but it just looks really lame and bland. It just doesn't come off as interesting at all. Even when you have the most amazing coloring and texture work in the world, the crop makes the difference. It also depends on how close or far away the subject in your icon is.
Also, in the second icon, apart from the reasons I mentioned above, it's also way too close and I always do find it important to keep some of the person's hair in the icon. It makes a huge difference sometimes.
And now, the crops I do actually like! Ya hey!
CENTER CROPS
Some love them, some don't like them. I'm on Team number one. I love love love them.
CUT OFF SIDES OF THE FACE
MOTION CROPS
Whether it be moving hair, or a person running, or anything. It's a captured moment of something happening, it's interesting on itself. Look out for blurry hands or anything though, those never look good.
NEGATIVE SPACE
Because who doesn't love it, really?
CLOSE CROP
For this kind of crop, be sure to still have a piece of their hair and to not cut off their chin.
CUT OFF AT THE EYES
This one is a personal favorite, I have to admit. It's much preferred to cutting off at the eyebrows. Or worse, in the middle of their forehead. examples
OBSCURE CROPS
'NORMAL' CROPS
Sometimes the coloring really does make the icon instead of the crop. :P
Well, I hope this was of use for at least someone, because it really took a long time to write. :)
Extremely text heavy!
Written in Photoshop CS5. Don't know how it applies to other software.
I. COLORING
First of all, I have to say, how I color my icons isn't really all that special. I use the same method on each and every one of my icons. Different settings, yes, but mostly the same method. I'm not creative enough to do a different one for every single icon I make.
My method changes though. It isn't the same one as when I first started making icons, and it isn't the same one as the gazillion methods I had after that. Once I find a good one, I stick with it. Until I get bored or accidentally find something else.
A while ago I did a tutorial here which is basically still the method I'm using now.
There were a couple icons though that tutorials for were requested, so I'll be explaining what I did to them.
(also, crops may vary because I'm using the original finished icon, but I'm cropping the original pic now)
Asked by hopeitallaway:
to
I remember this cap giving me trouble, but I really wanted to do something with it because the forest is pretty and pretty people running in it is pretty and... well, you get the point. But, just look at it, it's extremely dark, right? And not extremely colorful either.
I always put a yellow Soft Light layer on an icon (see above tutorial), which is usually at 20% opacity, but in this case I put it on around 60% because the colors really needed some yellow to liven up. That wasn't enough though, so there was a Hue/Saturation layer added with the Master Saturation +20, which makes it look a whole lot better. (I'm experimenting right now though and duplicating the yellow Soft Light layer and lowering that opacity isn't looking too bad either!)
Anyway, from that point on you can just fiddle with some Color Balance layers or something else to add a little more yellows and reds and there you have a colorful icon! I just came out with something like this. (I still hate that his face is kinda blurry though, but meh, it's about the coloring right now)
to
Damn you, Merlin caps! Always with the dark and uncolorful things you do! (they do have colorful scenes though, but seems they don't in this case :P) Anyway, there really isn't anything special about this icon's coloring. What I like is the crop though. I tell you, when you get the chance to icon a pretty cap with two people's face on it, try to crop it in a way you see the half of one person's face, and a half of the other person's face. If it looks good, you have a crop! Most times it doesn't look good though, either because the faces are too close together (and the cap's quality isn't that good) or too far away or something, but in this case it worked. Especially with Merlin being all busy scheming in the foreground (in the dark) and a noticably lighter nonsuspecting Morgana in the background. The contrast between the dark and the light skins of the two is the reason I couldn't get this icon to be really colorful. Because when you focus on Merlin looking good, Morgana looks wonky, and if you do it the other way around, Merlin'll look wonky. There were ways to fix that but I'm lazy and I thought it looked good enough as it is. (no one'll be using my icons anymore after this, I swear :P)
Asked by nalazhar:
to
Fun thing about The Vampire Diaries caps - when they're dark, they're dark. But when they're outside, they're COLORS COLORS COLORS (or at least, potential for colorful thinigs!) and nice quality at that. They were that less in season one though, but since season two it's improved. Anyway, even though there are some colorful things in the image, it's still quite dark so that's why there were lot of screen layers involved (2 or so). A simple Hue/Saturation layer with +20 also did the trick and I think that's all the 'special' things I did for this. Remaking it now I ended up with this.
This also goes for this icon.
Asked by lover_of_narnia:
to
Man, Legend of the Seeker caps are a DREAM. A dream, I tell you! They have amazingly choreographed fight scenes, slow motion hairporn, pretty people, amazingly gorgeous scenery, everything is colorful and all caps for it are AMAZING quality. I get mine from orange_corner where they have S2 in 1920x1080px so you know, you can't go wrong with that. This is why I can't stop iconning this show, people. One - I love the show to death. Two - everything I said above. Seriously, the original cap for this icon was this. It's in movement so it's not as sharp but because of the size of the image it's enough.
Now, back to the icon. It's one of my personal favorites, to be honest. The colors worked really well in my opinion, there's negative space that is actually grass and there's Kahlan in her pretty white dress but it's just her silhouette and not her face. So, basically, lots of Hue/Saturation, yellow highlights and red shadows in the Color Balance, enough Levels to make it contrasted enough, an extra added light texture set on Lighten to not have such dark blacks, and there you go!
I realize this was more of a LOTS cap lovefest than an actual tutorial, so I do apologize. But really, most of the work is done by the cap itself. Believe me.
to
Say what you want about Lumen, but she made for some great shots. This one has to be my favorite though. It's her lying down, her hair ends all curly, and the cap is colorful enough to work with. This is also one of those cases in which the cropping can make such a huge difference.
Basically, the same as the above tutorial. Make the colors that are already there pop by Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, enough contrast, and an added light texture. Here are lots of yellows and reds to work with and that's always fun.
II. CROPPING
In case you're still there, and I really hope you are, here's the cropping part which a few people asked questions about.
wandererjulia asked: this could be a very stupid question but how do you crop your icons?
do you work in a great canvas or you prefer to put the cap inside a 100x100 canvas and resize the cap until you're satisfied with the crop?
I'm lazy as hell and I just use the crop tool. It's the easiest and it works just as fine as the other way. I change my Crop Tool settings from the default though, like this:
Crop Guide Overlay - Changed it to Rule Of Thirds, which gives you something like this, which is absolutely perfect for center crops and the like.
Opacity - Needs to be dark, obviously, but not too dark so that you can still see what you're cutting off of the original image.
Resolution - (which is the option you see when you're not in the middle of cropping something) Always set to 72. It's what all pixel images work with and it also avoids issues of incorrect font sizes when you're trying to work with text.
If you don't like the crop tool because you can't really play with the crop after it's cropped (like with the Free Transform tool), do not worry because there's always this option.
exp0se asked: I love how you achieve such deep reds in your icons. I'd love some pointers on how you get your icons to be so wonderfully contrasted and rich in colors like red. You're one of the best I've seen at making icons look so vibrant and pretty. :)
Doesn't have anything to do with cropping but it's the only coloring-related question I got so I'm answering it here anyway.
By the way, hi there hon! I love you! :D Ahem. So basically, it's really just always a Color Balance layer at the end (in which I heighten the Red in Shadows and heighten the Yellow in Highlights), those really do the trick. After that one there's always a Levels layer (unless the contrast is already high enough), and change this setting. It usually averages between 10-30 and sometimes higher.
A general cropping guide would be wonderful! Maybe with some of this included?
A. Do you automatically see the crop in your mind when you pick out images, or do you just chose images at random and crop them with no idea or plan behind it?
B. Do you decide on one crop right way, or do you crop the image in different ways before deciding on one.
C. Do you color the image before you crop or the other way around.
D. Do you use the crop tool, the rectangular marque tool/free transform or maybe both? If it's just one, why do you prefer that one over the other?
E. What are your thoughts on the different types of cropping, negative space, close crop, obscure etc. And what are some of your tips on each one, what to look for in images, how to crop to make it look balanced, how to not make it seem awkward, that sort of thing. And maybe you could include some example icon for each category and talk a little bit about how and why you decided to crop each in that particular way?
A. I usually just save pretty caps. Or the ones that look croppable, like half of a person's face behind another person's face or the close-up or the far off ones. Caps are never predictable though. Sometims I look at a cap and think that it's very croppable, but then I try it and it never works out. Or the crop works but the coloring doesn't. And when even black and white doesn't work on it, I just give up. And sometimes caps can surprise you. When you can make a boring cap interesting, you know you've got a good crop.
B. It depends. Sometimes I know right away what I want. Then I do it and get on with it. Sometimes, like above, I have a pretty cap but I'm having trouble on how to crop it, I do try a couple different things. Which is where the History panel comes in handy, hehe.
C. I crop first, then color. If you're using a full-sized cap or even something 200x200, you can't test your 100x100 textures yet in full quality. And even then there's always a chance when cropping it down to the usual 100x100, it might not look as good anymore as they did before. I think it's just a personal preference.
D. The crop tool, as explained in wandererjulia's question.
E. I personally think that, if YOU think a crop's good, then it's good. Here's a couple I'm personally not a fan of though:
1.
The case of: I really want to make a negative space icon of this cap but there's already a background and I can't just smudge it out. Solution: get your Rectangular Marquee tool and extend it that way. Color it and done. Problem is: you can still see where they obviously extended it. What's the trouble in actually trying to hide that somewhat? You can go a long way with some textures and such. I've done such a thing in this one for example:
I mean, it could've been better. Much better. But it's not as noticable anymore, no? That's just what textures and a bit of smudging can do.
2.
Cropping off at the mouth so the rest of their head is visible? I'm not a fan of it. It can look good sometimes, every crop can depending on the cap, but in this case? No.
3.
Sometimes you have a cap but you don't really know how to crop it, so you just crop the whole face and be done with it. I know I've been guilty of this in the past, but it just looks really lame and bland. It just doesn't come off as interesting at all. Even when you have the most amazing coloring and texture work in the world, the crop makes the difference. It also depends on how close or far away the subject in your icon is.
Also, in the second icon, apart from the reasons I mentioned above, it's also way too close and I always do find it important to keep some of the person's hair in the icon. It makes a huge difference sometimes.
And now, the crops I do actually like! Ya hey!
CENTER CROPS
Some love them, some don't like them. I'm on Team number one. I love love love them.
CUT OFF SIDES OF THE FACE
MOTION CROPS
Whether it be moving hair, or a person running, or anything. It's a captured moment of something happening, it's interesting on itself. Look out for blurry hands or anything though, those never look good.
NEGATIVE SPACE
Because who doesn't love it, really?
CLOSE CROP
For this kind of crop, be sure to still have a piece of their hair and to not cut off their chin.
CUT OFF AT THE EYES
This one is a personal favorite, I have to admit. It's much preferred to cutting off at the eyebrows. Or worse, in the middle of their forehead. examples
OBSCURE CROPS
'NORMAL' CROPS
Sometimes the coloring really does make the icon instead of the crop. :P
Well, I hope this was of use for at least someone, because it really took a long time to write. :)