Making Icons (help me help myself)

lurk

lurk

Mitä?
Howdy all,

I have a Photoshop / icon creation question for all of you more skilled in the art than I.

I have seen lots of icons which appear to be styalized versions of photographs like these cell phones http://www.xicons.com/details/818.html

Now it may be that those where drawn free hand and I don't mean to offend the artist if that was the case. But if that was done more through the magic of filters... How would you direct someone who is artistically inept but technically adept to achive similar results?

Thanks a bunch!
-Eric
 
They look like re-touched product photos to me. I would think if they were hand-made they would be better lit than that.
 
yea, those look really bad, the lighting kilt them.

Are you asking what filter?

Filters>render>lighting effects.
Or a gradient distorted
I would have used a soft brush with a feathered edge and did it by hand, but not like that, that looks carelessly done.
 
I guess those may not have been the best examples but I wanted something that looked fairly "obvious" to illustrate my point. Basically the situation is that we need to make a couple of icons but have no money in the budget to pay for the services of a professional. [I find this asinine given that my time is none too cheap. We are spending thousands of dollars to avoid spending a couple hundred... but that is the way institutional budgets work :-( ]

So what I thought I would do is use a digital camera to take a picture of something, say a stack of books for a library icon. Then use some sort of Photoshop magic to make it look like an icon.

Now I can't draw but I can trace and use filters so is there some sort of a recipe for doing this that would help me out. Or is it just an art which cannot be explained in a simple set of steps?

Thanks!
-Eric
 
t's easy

1.Take Your Image
2.Edit it in Photoshop, size it down to 128 X 128 pixels.
3. Once done, make a mask for your icon, masks work much like they do in photoshop, black and white matte that hides part of an image, white shows it, black hides...
4.I use Iconographer in Mac OS X to create my icons. open an icaon and see how they made there masks.
5. Make the icon in iconographer
6.Output to whatever format. i use them for my CDs, DVDs, but they need to be named .VolumeIcon.icns for that to work.
 
Here is an example of some of my icons for my archive CD/DVDs.
 

Attachments

  • iconexample.jpg
    iconexample.jpg
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When you create you image in photoshop, you don't need to make a mask. As long as the image is 128X128, and tranparent background. All you must do after the design work is, bring it into Iconographer (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/11842) through either copy and paste or click and drag. Then save as whatever you like, either 'Apply to file/folder' or save as '.ico'. You can also create a family of different sized ones that change when they get smaller or larger, or even different colour modes. Remember that Iconographer is Shareware. So be generous to the programmer.
 
really, damn, wish i knew that, would have saved the time making those damn masks. I'll have to try that sometime.
 
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