#*m: tutorials

STEP ONE. find your images. pretty much any image can be used to make a style one icon, i’d just personally avoid super close ups of the person’s face. it can crop weirdly sometimes, so bear that in mind. for this tutorial, i’ll be using this image of jessica chastain

STEP TWO. open photoshop. once loaded, open your image & crop it down to 100px by 100px. sharpen & colour your image. in order to make this icon work, you have to make sure your image is the only layer to edit

( to do this, merely right hand click over the layer, select duplicate layer and then delete the bottom one. )

STEP THREE. click the rounded rectangle square tool. make sure the little drop down box has ‘path’ as its option

STEP FOUR. at this point i like to zoom in on the canvas to 300%, but that’s personal preference. click on your image and a little box will pop up, and this is where you enter the dimensions of your icon. for context, this is the size the actual icon will be while inside the 100px canvas. it can be any size depending on what your aesthetic says --- but for my icons, i usually go with 80px by 80px. once that’s done, click enter.

STEP FIVE. a little grey box will show up, and from there, press CTRL+T and move the box to where you want the icon to be. below you’ll see the grey box pop up & how i’ve also positioned mine in the canvas

STEP SIX. once that’s done, click ‘selection’ in the top bar, and another box will pop up. make sure your feather radius is set to zero. i’m not entirely sure what this part means --- but from what i can figure out, this ensures the icon itself is smooth and clean. once you press OK, the lines should now be swirly and moving along the image. you then want to go select, inverse, so there’s a second swirly line around the edge of the image

STEP SEVEN. press delete. this smoothly deletes the background of the image, leaving you with a perfect icon. from there, press CTRL+D to deselect the icon, and then press CTRL+T again, and adjust the icon to where you want it to sit on the canvas. this is esp important to make sure it wasn’t wonky when you upload it to tumblr

STEP EIGHT. save as a png file and voila ! one dash icon !

STEP ONE. find your gifs. if you’re using another maker’s packs, be sure to check if they’re okay with their content being edited for either private or public use. if they aren’t, respect that. always make sure to never claim someone else's work as your own. for this tutorial i’ll be using a gif i made myself, of the lovely missy peregrym:

STEP TWO. find your psd & texture. the psd i use for my gif icons isn’t one i can share, but the texture is my own. there’s a few floating around in the tags i believe, but if you’d like to use mine, you can download it HERE. in terms of psd, it really depends what you want your gifs to look like. i tend to gravitate towards grey and neutral toned psds, but it depends. download a few and experiment ! once you have your psd & texture, open them in photoshop.

STEP THREE. open the gifs in photoshop. i like to open mine in batches of 21, instead of one by one. that means i can pretty much edit them in one go, and it saves me some time. you can see how many i’ve selected here:

STEP THREE. crop down to the size. i usually watch the gif play first, to see where the actor moves in frame, so i can tell if i need to adjust or zoom in a little more. when it comes to picking your actual gif icon size, it really depends --- i vary between three sizes; and everyone has their own opinions. my standard size --- and the rpc’s standard these days --- is 80px by 80px. once you’ve settled on your size, crop. now we have this:

STEP FOUR. i usually drag my psd to a new window for this part, because it makes it easier to merely drag the colouring and texture; rather than duplicating the files. after you’ve cropped the gif, the layer order alters and you want to then on the top layer --- aka the highest number. from there, drag your PSD & texture to above the selected layer, like so:

now, we have this: