How to make an icon

Making It 80x80

One of the things you need to decide at this point is whether to flip the image. Many times you do not have to, but there are times where icons look better facing to the right. This is because they would then be facing towards the boards instead of away from them. In this situation we will be flipping the image. First select the image, then go to Image, select Flip, and chose Horizontal.(pic.7)

(pic.7)

Now before you do anything else you will want to make sure the image is clean. You do not want to have any parts of the previous background in the image. If need be clean it up with the Eraser Tool.(pic23)

Next thing is to resize the image. All IGN icons have to be 80x80, but very few images alone are 80x80. To start select the image, go to Image, and select Resample.(pic.8) Then change the measurement from inches to pixels.(pic.9) Go to the Height and Width and change the larger one to 80.(pic.10)

(pic.8)

We now need to place out resized image (pic.11) on an 80x80 canvas with the correct background.

Click on the New Tool(pic12), change the measurement from Inches to pixels, and make both the Height and Width 80.(pic13)

Next click on Paper Color, and choose the correct background color. The correct color being b1b3bc, or for RGB 177,179,188. If have not created this color before you will need to do so now as it is not default in Corel. Choose Other under color.(pic14) Where is says Components type in the RGB code for the color. R = 177, G = 179, and B = 188. Finish it off by selecting Add To Pallete.(pic15) In the future it will be the last option when choosing a color, after the purples.(pic14)

Now select your resized image(pic11), do a Ctrl+C to copy the image, select the new canvas(pic16), and do a Ctrl+V to paste the image on the new canvas.(pic17)

Now you will want to make your icon looks as best as possible. To do this you may want to make the colors a bit more crisp, brighten up an image, darken it, sharpen it to allow more detail to show, ect. There are many tools to choose from to work with. I suggest playing with many of them to test different things out. In this tutorial I will cover a few techniques.

First up is to get the colors to show up a bit more. To do this we will select the image on our 80x80 canvas(pic17), click on Image, select Adjust, and choose Brightness-Contrast-Intensity.(pic18)

You won't need to change much. Generally just change the Contrast by moving it up by 10, or 15. In this case we will move the Contrast up by 10 so colors are better, and move the Intesity up by 5 so the lights on the goggles look better.(pic19) Some times you may want to play with the Brightness too, but in this case it isn't needed.

Another effect you could do is to sharpen the image to allow for more detail to show. This won't be done to our icon in the tutorial, but I am gonig to explain how you could. First select the image on the 80x80 canvas(pic19), go to Effects, go down to Sharpen, and pic one. I like to use Adaptive Unsharpen.(pic20) Don't over do it, or the image will get jagged. Generally 25-50 would be enough.(pic21) Most images will not need this at all.

The final technique I will show you is the fade. It is one of the most tried, and failed techniques in icon making.You generally don't have to add a fade, but sometimes it makes icons look better. First start off with your image after any adjustments you would like to make, and select it.(pic19) Next select the Eraser Tool.(pic23) Change the Nib Size to 15, and make the Soft Edge 100.(pic24)

Now line up the curser so that half of it will go over the bottom part of the image(pic25). You may want to use the Zoom Tool(pic4), and enlarge the image to 200% so that you have a better view. Now hold down Ctrl, click to erase, and make one single pass over the image.(pic26)

When you finish making any adjustments, or adding any effects you will want to make everything one layer. Simple select your image, right click on your mouse, go down to Combine, and choose Combine All Objects With Background.