Sharpening is a little tricky, yes. It looks different on every monitor and at every resolution. I'm not sure I get it right all the time, either. I have a few ways of doing sharpening, but I don't use them consistently for every icon. Hmmm.
1) only resized to 100x100, unedited, completely unsharpened
Not even actually that bad, but when you downsize a perfectly fine image, it will always lose a little definition. I personally would prefer his eyes a little sharper.
2) sharpened (I simply used Photoshop's plain "Sharpen" filter) (enlarged view in PS)
Now this already looks too sharp for me. You can see (if maybe not in the original size but in the enlarged one) that there are white lines around him everywhere. Those make the contrast, of course, but those should not get too strong or the end result will look too sharp.
3) sharpened twice (just for comparison, 2 was already too sharp in places for my taste)
You can now clearly see the white and black lines that look a bit like staircases on the diagonals. This is way too sharp.
-> So what I usually do is I copy (or stamp) the layer and sharpen that copy. Then either a) I lower the opacity of the sharpened layer until it looks okay, or b) mask away the parts where it looks too sharp. You want the focus of the icon (whatever that is, usually the subject's eyes/face) to be sharper than the rest. So I usually leave the sharpening on the face as is, and remove it around the edges.
4) sharpened once, masked everything but the face:
So this last one, for me personally, looks okay. What does everyone else think? Which one would you consider well sharpened?
Noooow, text. Text is a different kettle of fish, because it's often very thin, and if you want it to be readable, you also have to give it some contrast - but not too much.
5) white text as it comes out of the PS text tool, aliasing set to "Strong"
This looks totally fine to me personally. Some people might say it already has some artifacts on the diagonals.
6) stamped and blurred and took the text selection as mask, then blurred the mask:
This looks less sharp but also still readable. Doesn't hurt, I'd say.
7) black drop shadow, distance 1, size 0, of course that increases readability a lot:
but quite honestly, this is way too sharp for my eyes now, too.
8) same technique as in 6, stamped and blurred and took the text selection as mask, then blurred the mask:
Now this looks better. Contrasted but not oversharpened. (Although I think a little less sharp wouldn't hurt here, either.)
What does everyone else think? Which one do you think looks best?
I know the text blurring was a little fast, oops. I'll look up the text blurring tutorial. I know I learned that from someone, so it should be somewhere...
Re: Questions Thread
In general, in my experience, people who are new to iconmaking will oversharpen their icons. (Look at mine from 10 years ago and laugh.)
I made you some examples here:
[link to original image]
1) only resized to 100x100, unedited, completely unsharpened
Not even actually that bad, but when you downsize a perfectly fine image, it will always lose a little definition. I personally would prefer his eyes a little sharper.
2) sharpened (I simply used Photoshop's plain "Sharpen" filter)
Now this already looks too sharp for me. You can see (if maybe not in the original size but in the enlarged one) that there are white lines around him everywhere. Those make the contrast, of course, but those should not get too strong or the end result will look too sharp.
3) sharpened twice (just for comparison, 2 was already too sharp in places for my taste)
You can now clearly see the white and black lines that look a bit like staircases on the diagonals. This is way too sharp.
-> So what I usually do is I copy (or stamp) the layer and sharpen that copy. Then either a) I lower the opacity of the sharpened layer until it looks okay, or b) mask away the parts where it looks too sharp. You want the focus of the icon (whatever that is, usually the subject's eyes/face) to be sharper than the rest. So I usually leave the sharpening on the face as is, and remove it around the edges.
4) sharpened once, masked everything but the face:
So this last one, for me personally, looks okay. What does everyone else think? Which one would you consider well sharpened?
Noooow, text. Text is a different kettle of fish, because it's often very thin, and if you want it to be readable, you also have to give it some contrast - but not too much.
5) white text as it comes out of the PS text tool, aliasing set to "Strong"
This looks totally fine to me personally. Some people might say it already has some artifacts on the diagonals.
6) stamped and blurred and took the text selection as mask, then blurred the mask:
This looks less sharp but also still readable. Doesn't hurt, I'd say.
7) black drop shadow, distance 1, size 0, of course that increases readability a lot:
but quite honestly, this is way too sharp for my eyes now, too.
8) same technique as in 6, stamped and blurred and took the text selection as mask, then blurred the mask:
Now this looks better. Contrasted but not oversharpened. (Although I think a little less sharp wouldn't hurt here, either.)
What does everyone else think? Which one do you think looks best?
I know the text blurring was a little fast, oops. I'll look up the text blurring tutorial. I know I learned that from someone, so it should be somewhere...