How to Create Your Own Icons

How to Create Your Own Icons How to Create Your Own Icons The concept of creating your own icons can be best defined through sketching. It is an important facet in drawing, not only to create your own icons but also to unleash your innovative design for the same. It is not mandatory that your sketch should be accurate while designing the outline for an icon. But it is just the approach you take to put your ideas on a drawing paper. Often some reference pictures and a rough sketch might help an individual to get a clear idea for his own icon designs. An individual can also use a software program to create some cool looking icons. In here we discuss about creating icons using Photoshop software application in Windows XP operating system.

But there are a few basic steps that an individual should observe while creating his own icons. These points and factors are described in brief under the following subheads: -

Create the Baseline: – When an individual tries to design new icons, it is advisable that he should grab a paper and a pen along for sketching his ideas out. Consider how it might work as a part of a set of icons and also how the icons will appear in the context of your subject. Avoid using shapes like words, letters, faces, hands or fonts in your icon designs. Instead you should use simple patterns so that the finals step of creating an icon becomes easy.
Demonstrate your Design using the Software: – Exemplify your design or image for the icons using an Illustrator or FreeHand application. Create at least three sizes of the icon for your created image. This is because there will be a drop shadow effect added to the image later by default. Select three sizes (14 × 14, 30 × 30 or 46 × 46) pixels which will make your process easier for creating an icon. Use the Photoshop software application for copying and pasting the vector images you just created.
Creating the Images in Photoshop: – Check the resolution and readability of your images after pasting them on the Photoshop. You should add the drop shadow effect to your images by double-clicking on the image layer. There is an available option called “Drop Shadow” to use this effect. Customize the dimension of your icon images keeping the “Distance” to 2, “Angle” to 135 and “Size” to 2. It is recommended to change the opacity to 75% in the initial process.
Compilation: – Now since you have all your images created with user-customize settings. Next step is to compile the images into an .ico file (it is the extension for the icon files). The background layer of each image takes the size of 24-bit by default for your icons. But these will appear in a frame. Press the Delete option available and remove those blank frames. But for the 4-bit and 8-bit versions, you will have to make the background of your icon files transparent. Save the file in the Photoshop after the entire process ends.

These are the essential steps that an individual should pursue with interest while creating the icon files. But make sure you follow the default settings of the Photoshop software application for making the process of creating your own icons easier and simple.