Q&A

[goodbyebird]

Questions & Answers

We had a fair amount of response in the poll, so here is the rumored Q&A post! Any questions you have about graphics, ask away and hopefully someone can help you out. Makers can also make a comment and people can ask them questions specifically - I'll set mine up, feel free to follow that example - and I'll link individual makers as well as question threads in the post when I'm around to edit.

The Request Fest is still open until Sunday evening, so get those requests and fills in.

goodbyebird's question thread
timetobegin's question thread
geckoholic's question thread
hsapiens's question thread
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Who's your most inspirational icon makers?
How do you organize your icon folders?
What are your favorite textures to use?
compressing your icons? (file size too big, smart objects)

Comments

Re: hsapiens's question thread

[anirishlullaby]

Hiiiiii Mish! :D You know I'm a fan!

I think what I love most about your work is the ability you have to make an icon smooth and sharp at the same time - it's like the perfect combination! Especially on icons like the Lydia one here. HOW do you get that effect? Any specific tips? THANKS :D

Re: hsapiens's question thread

[hsapiens]

I think that 95% of what I end up is in the cap to begin with, honestly. I used to talk about my process and the like but with the advent of Blu-Ray and HD, the caps are just amazing quality these days. They have such rich detail. If the detail isn't there to start with, there is nothing in the PS toolkit that will put it there unless you're doing original art on the cap. :)

This was driven home to me when I recently picked up some caps from one of my first loves, Stargate SG-1, to see what I could do with them now that I was a "better" icon maker. There is no Blu-Ray, no HD, of the early seasons but the show was shot in what I think of as modern times (1997). The caps are smaller, fuzzier, and they tend to go sideways before I get to a third level of futzing. They're messes. It wasn't my skills that were the problem back in the day; it was the caps.

That said, I'll tell you what my 5% contribution is. I crop first, paste into a new document, fix the lighting and do very basic color correction, stamp visible, and then I smooth using the smudge tool. I set it to 11% opacity and use a smallish brush size (usually 5px if the image is 100px x 100px but it depends on the size of person within that frame, of course). I smooth in circular motions and I follow the areas' light/color: I don't cross shadow lines or try to fix moles, etc. I don't remove wrinkles from a face; I MIGHT smooth along the length of a wrinkle if it has become pixelated but I don't try to "fix" people's features. I'm just blending away the noise introduced by cropping/processing.

After I have removed the PS artifacts, I copy that layer and set it, most often, to soft light. Any further work I do on the image (most often via light textures, gradients, and b/w textures) is sandwiched between those two layers. If I like what the textures did but the effect is overwhelming the image, I'll try setting that top most layer to overlay. Sometimes that makes a mess worse. In the case of the Lydia icon, it was exactly what the icon needed.

Sharpening is a matter of taste and I've noticed that an icon that looks perfectly sharpened on my older, expensive monitor at home looks too sharp on my newer, cheaper monitor at work. I've chosen to use my home monitor as my guide since that's where I make icons but the disparity is shocking.

I've recently "discovered" Topaz Clean, which is a third party filter that you have to buy. I spent $30?/$35? for it because I Googled and found a coupon for "half off" the cost; they're almost always out there. I had a hard time deciding to buy it; I chose Photoshop because it's a huge upfront investment but no ongoing expenses -- fairly cheap for a hobby that entertains me for years and years.

Anyhow, I love this new toy (quite visible on my latest three batches of icons, I fear) but I achieved much the same result previously using unsharp mask. The results weren't as interesting, and others use the more mercurial Artistic -> Paint Daubs filter, but they're very very very similar. If you want to try it, Topaz gives away 30 day free trials of all their wares so you could try it for free and decide if it was worth it to you.

I tend to use the filter on the soft light copy of the image though sometimes I use it on the "Normal" smudged copy and mask away the parts that are excessive, which are usually the facial features. (I always convert a layer to a Smart Layer before applying any filters so that I can adjust them as the icon develops. This step gives me a handy-dandy filter mask.)

For a recent competition, we were tasked to have glowy skin but perfect detail. For that, I used my same M.O. but I added a second copy of the smoothed "base" under all of the light textures, gradients, and whatnot. I gaussian blurred it and set it to screen at about a 20% opacity. I prefer not to blur out details but to show you the diff, here's "my" style first and the contest style second:



Not a huge difference, I grant you, but that's the 5% I'm talking about being able to "bring out" in the final icon.

ETA: Did I answer your question? I think it got lost in there, in my rambling. If I didn't, please let me know and I'll take another stab at it. :)

Re: hsapiens's question thread

[anirishlullaby]

Sorry it took me FOREVER (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to respond to this! I read it as soon as you posted it and have been thinking on it ever since I swear! I just didn't reply immediately which I really shouldn't do because it usually means I forget to in general, OOPS. Anyway!

I'M STILL SUCH A FAN OF YOURS! Don't minimize your talent! You can't convince me of it! ;-)

I think all of what you say here makes A LOT of sense. I especially love your approach to using the smoothing button or whatever you call it (I'm so technical it's awesome). I really need to try that more in my icons and graphics - it works so so so well on yours! Seriously, AMAZING. I just remember this one I have of yours that's Chris Argent and it's seriously PHENOMENAL. I'm guessing you used this tactic for making it among other genius things.

Paint daubs is another new approach that I've been trying lately. I'm sure that you guys have it down WAY better than I do. The more I try the closer I'll be to getting there though, right? I hope! :)

I also love the idea of painting onto icons. I just suck at it -sadface- oh well. Maybe I'll get better at that someday too!

THANKS SO MUCH for your response! I really loved it! I hope to see many many many more of your icons in the very near future! I'll be saving tons! :D <3