Activity #61 - Ask The Maker

[tinny]

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:
<center><img src='https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/file/541651.png' title='Activity #61 Ask the Maker 2022' alt='Activity Header #61 Ask The Maker 2022' /> <user name="icontalking"> <a href="https://icontalking.dreamwidth.org/64357.html">Activity Post</a> </center>

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:

<b>Username + where you post your work:</b> <b>What can we request from you (tutorials, Q&A, guides etc.)</b> --->(If you know of anything that you're not able to answer/do, please mention it)<--- <b>Can we hotlink your icons?:</b>

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

Comments

Questions Thread

[tinny]

Ask questions for the community here

Re: Questions Thread

[mxcatmoon]

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!!!

Re: Questions Thread

[tinny]

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...

Re: Questions Thread

[mxcatmoon]

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!

Re: Questions Thread

[tinny]

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!

Re: Questions Thread

[grayswandir]

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...

Re: Questions Thread

[tinny]

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.

Re: Questions Thread

[blueshiftofdeath]

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?