#icons help

when making icons, most people take a screencap and then crop and resize it. are we gonna do that ? haha no. we’re not gonna do that. here’s what we’re gonna do. 

1. make a new canvas in photoshop that is whatever size you want your icons to be. mine is usually 108x108 but some people like small icons, and that’s okay. some people like big icons, which is also fine. anyways. do that. now you should have a nice and cute little square in your ps window. 

2. rectangle tool. literally a life saver. in case you’ve never used photoshop, this is the rectangle tool: 

click that. now a color palette should appear at the top of the window. it looks like this: 

this is gonna be your MAIN BORDER for your icons. so make it whatever color you want, who gives a fuck. make it NEON. express yourself. anyways. if you double click in the window, a pop up should suddenly appear ( it says CREATE RECTANGLE ) giving you dimensions. make the rectangle the exact dimensions of the canvas. that way you avoid any over lap that has a bit of the image peaking through. 

and guess what ? that’s your template. THAT EASY. so now when you take screencaps, you can just open up photoshop and paste the image. like so: 

then you can hit CONTROL + T, and transform and downsize the image to fit the rectangle. seeeee ? : 

now slap a psd over that sucker and call it good. 

tuh-dah ! the best thing too is that you can keep pasting new layers over and over and over again and NEVER have to worry about cropping or saving screencaps one at a time. pretty neat. then you can save it as a psd and come back to it later, making your icons consistent. it’s the fastest thing ever.