icontalking | Activity #61

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Activity #61 - Ask The Maker

this banner features an icon by abyss_valkyrie

May is always a bit low on traffic, let's see if we can make June more prolific! (If you want to make icons in addition to discussions, I have extended our May activity until the end of June, so you can do that, too, if you like.)

Ask The Maker is where you can ask your favorite makers about how they do that thing. You can ask for tutorials, guides/"How to", or ask any other questions related to their work. Check out the Maker thread (below) for makers who have signed up and are ready to answer your questions.

You can also ask questions to the community at large, and hope that someone is able to answer them. Do this in the Questions thread (below).

I am looking forward to interesting questions and discussions!

Please promote this activity!

You can use this code here:

The more participants the merrier! I will promote it at an official promo comm.

Here are the rules:

1) Maker-Driven

Rules for makers who want to sign up

Sign up by commenting to the Maker thread.

Please don't sign up if you know that you can't or do not plan to fulfill the requests you get within a month (until the end of June).

If you are an icon maker and you're willing to write tutorials, guides or answer questions (Q&A's), please sign up here with your name and where you post your work. Please state what you're willing to do/answer and if people can hotlink your work or not. Use this posting template:

There is no fixed time limit in which the signed up makers have to write these tutorials or answer questions, but it would be nice if everyone managed to post their answers within the next month. I will make the activity result post mid-July. Even if you take longer than that, please try and answer your questions. Please let people know if you find out you cannot fulfill the requests. Try not to leave people hanging.

All tutorials/Q&A etc. need to be posted in your community/journal and be posted publicly. In-depth explanations on tutorials is not a must, but highly encouraged.

When you finish your requests, post a link to them as a reply to the original request comment here. That way, I and the person requesting will be able to see them and I can add them to the activity result post at the end of the month.

2) Question-Driven - I have a question and anyone can answer

If you have a question about techniques, a specific look, etc, but you can't ask any maker directly (e.g. because they didn't sign up or are not on DW or because your question is more of the general kind), you may ask your question in the Questions thread.

Be aware that there is no guarantee that you'll get your question answered. You will increase your chances by asking specific questions about specific techniques and by giving icon examples, from different makers if possible. Please don't ask about single specific icons, nobody should feel pressured into participating.

Please don't hotlink icons from other makers without asking them. Reupload the icons (e.g. to imgur.com or postimages.com or your dw account) instead.

What's What

Question categories and examples

Guides - a guide is a general explanation post. The maker will make a post explaining how to achieve a particular effect, use a technique, use a tool, etc.

#1 - Text and typography in gimp by

cool_spectrum
#2 - A guide to picking textures (from our 2019 round) by

seraphina_snape

Tutorial - a tutorial is a step-by-step description of how to make a particular icon. Only the maker of an icon can make a tutorial of how they made that icon. If you ask for a tutorial, you must provide said icon with your question. This kind of question only makes sense in the Maker thread.

Trippy Tutorial by

tinebrella
Tutorial (from 2020) by

abyss_valkyrie
Tutorial by

tinyumbrella

Q&A - everything that doesn't quite fit the first two categories. Ask away, hope for the best. :)

Maker thread

Questions thread

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Makers, please sign up here

Ask questions for the community here

Hi! I just joined, and I'm really hoping for some info/advice. I'd love to start making more icons, but one main thing is holding me back. I can't seem to consistently get sharp/clear icons. Is there a trick to it?

Some info about my process:
I keep trying different methods because I can't seem to find a way that always works. My sources are screencaps, camera photos, and pix from the internet. I've used Photoshop, Lightroom, and Paint3D mostly. I've tried sharpening, resizing before, resizing after... Or maybe there's a rule about how and when to crop?

I found a tutorial on YT about pixel perfect and using Illustrator, but I know that a lot of DW folk just use things like gimp (I've thought about trying gimp, but it's another thing to learn so I want to know it would definitely produce clearer results than the others). My eyesight isn't the greatest, so that complicates things, I think.

Thanks!!!

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.

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)

(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)

(enlarged)

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:

(enlarged)

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...

This is great, thanks for the help!

I actually like #2 the best. I don't remember if I tried sharpening in PS or not. I don't use it as often since I'm pretty much a beginner with PS. I'll have to play around there more. Of course, it could be that I like #2 because I'm compensating for my vision which seems to have gotten worse recently (yes, a trip to the eye doctor has become a priority).

I love the black drop shadow, I'm definitely going to try it! Yeah, I like #7 best. I really do wonder how they look to others, and how much my vision affects how I'm seeing things. So let me ask, does the Hardison icon I'm using look blurry? Or okay?

Thanks again for doing this! It's very helpful!

I went this route because sharpening is very much in the eye of the beholder - not only eyesight, but also monitors influence it a lot. And of course my own eyes have gotten worse over the years, too. /o\ I'm also very interested in knowing what other people think about these.

In my personal opinion, the Hardison icon you're using looks okay. It could be a bit sharper, but it's not too blurry for me. The text is a little hard to read, but that's because you chose a font that doesn't come out as well at icon size. I personally would choose something plainer for a tag line like that. The H and the N look almost identical to me. Of course, I know it's supposed to say Hardison, so it's not really a problem. :D

Here's a very funny text guide by

absolutelybatty:
https://reflexive-verb.livejournal.com/50370.html

Here's a good sharpening guide (very PS-focused) by

tinebrella:
https://icons-concrit.livejournal.com/9523.html#cutid1

Here's a text guide that mentions blurring, but it's not the one I originally thought of: (omg there are so many tutorials on LJ)
https://mosaically.livejournal.com/7505.html

I hope these are useful!

Thanks so much for the links! I didn't think to look over at LJ, because I rarely think of LJ at all these days. I'll definitely check them out.

Yeah, I knew the text wasn't ideal, but I was so enamored with that font and thought it was perfect for Hardison, so I just went with it anyway. LOL. Ah, the trials of having to use a boring font because the cool ones don't work for icons. ;)

I definitely have some tools to explore now.

Yeah, the whole iconmaker community originated on LJ (as far as I'm aware), and was huge there for a long time. That's why 99% of the tutorials are still on LJ. There are only remnants of it left these days, but I'm glad that parts of it have made their way over to DW and taken root here.

Username + where you post your work:

aurora_amethyst @

1wonderment
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)
--->Anything really. I usually save my PSD's, so I can usually throw a tutorial together fairly quickly. I've never done Q&A before, but I'd be happy to answer any questions. I've done a guide of sorts on using textures and color layers on screen and lighten, so I wouldn't mind doing guides as well. ^^ I use Photoshop but have used GIMP and PSP in the past although I haven't used GIMP or PSP in forever, so there's not much I can do there. (Although I could go back and download GIMP....).<---
Can we hotlink your icons?: Sure, no problem.

Username + where you post your work:

tinny, I post everything to my personal journal, the tag is:
https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/tag/art-icons

What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)
Anything you like. I keep all my psds, and I like writing tutorials. Just please check out the tutorials and guides I've written in recent years, so you don't accidentally ask me a question I've already answered.
https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/tag/art-tutorial

Can we hotlink your icons?:
Sure.

Username + where you post your work: I am

applepips and I post at

inkblush
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) I am not in the habit of saving all my PSDs so individual icons might be a little difficult for me to recreate. But still, I can give it a fair short by backworking my way through it lol. Q & A's and guides on the other hand are definitely no problem at all!
Can we hotlink your icons?: Sure you can :)

Username + where you post your work:

aeriiths @

hunters_chance
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)
Tutorials are fine, for the most part I save my PSDs (if I can't find something I'll either have a go at recreating it or let you know it's disappeared into the ether). I can also do guides/Q&As :)
Can we hotlink your icons?: Yep that's fine!

I was glad to read this, because it's pretty much what I do too, and I've always wondered if other people did the same thing. In some cases I'll do three layers, with the background blurred and the focal point sharpened (or semi-sharpened, as you said, with partial opacity or whatever), and yeah, I think it results in a good balance where the image looks clear but isn't overly sharp.

For the text, to me #6 looks the best, actually, but I'm not sure if it's the drop shadow on #8 that I'm just not as into, or if it's that it seems too sharp, or if it's the drop shadow that makes it seem sharp. It still looks fine (much better than #7!), but I'd probably prefer #5 over #8.

It looks different on every monitor and at every resolution.

Agh, yeah. :/ All the more noticeable nowadays, when many of us have multiple screens and can see for ourselves how images look different on all of them...

Username + where you post your work:

spankulert
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) Tutorials from the last two posts, Q&A + Guides if I can remember what I was up to lol.
--->(If you know of anything that you're not able to answer/do, please mention it)<--- accidentally deleted all my textures and past PSDs a while back...
Can we hotlink your icons?: Yup

Username + where you post your work:

novindalf at

split_loyalties
What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.) I only really have time for Q&As I'm afraid. I keep copies of all my textures and fonts used in icons so can certainly answer anything about that!
Can we hotlink your icons?: Sure

Thank you! It's always great to hear about other people's processes and get opinions on what works for other people and what doesn't!

when many of us have multiple screens and can see for ourselves how images look different on all of them...

Eeek, yes, whenever I look at my icons on the larger screen at work, they look very different - especially the sharpening.

Thank you all for doing this!!

I had started making a lot of icons in photoshop on my laptop, but stopped due to finger pain. Now I have an iPad and would love to get back to it on there. Unfortunately, photoshop on there gets blurry when you zoom in a lot— I guess it’s not designed for pixel-level art. But I really want to see how it looks zoomed in. I feel like a pixel art tool though wouldn’t be good for icons (for which I want effect tools like there are in photoshop). Do any of you have suggestions?

Hi! I really like your use of texture in a lot of your icons and would love to see how they came together!

Specifically from your examples these two:

Not from your examples, but the composition/text/everything about this one is also super stunning and I'd love to know more.

But generally I'm just going to say I love your lighting and general composition!

Hiya! I really love the Taeyong icon in your examples and would love to hear the process that went into it a little bit. I really love the colouring and the way the textures work together and just... basically the whole icon.

Edit:

Dis one

Edited 2022-06-16 14:13 (UTC)

Compositional question for you. I always have a hard time with composition in that it usually feels really awkward say... having a subject floating in an icon.

Yet these two just look so right and natural, yet when I do it... I just kinda feel like something is off if that makes sense? Any tips on how to go about this sort of look?

Hiiii I'm just gonna slide in here, but... these icons right here?

Stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to see something about what techniques you used for the colouring of them! They're so dreamy and soft and pretty. (And from fandoms I know nothing about, so won't use even though UGH GORG)

This is a really cool composition. I really like how the background is done! Would love to know what sort of technique you used for it. :)

Thank you so much for asking everyone questions and livening up our activity! <3

I'll go check what I did for this icon.

ETA: Looks like I chose a very dark-background cap and set it to Linear Add in the background, masking away the people in front of it.

If I find the time, I'll write up a proper tutorial for it this week.

Edited 2022-06-16 14:26 (UTC)

My crusade to make sure everyone on this post feels appreciated and hyped up is drawing to a close! I promise you're last on my list, but no one here is the least. Y'all are all amazing! *_*

I'd love to know about the colouring process because she's Glowing and having a peek at some images from that game (AC: O?) that must have been a trial. I know all the AC games I've played the lighting has felt pretty... eh.

also just a quick question. Would you mind sharing the texture used to make the lines in this icon? :3

It looked so empty! I had to do something and honestly, it's not a bother, because everyone has really cool styles and I'm sure I'll learn some really cool tips. I'm only just dipping my toes back in after not iconing in years so learning new things or even maybe being reminded of things that I knew and forgot? Priceless.

Linear Add is one of those layer settings I think I usually ignore. Clearly I need to expand my horizons!

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