Method One: Photo Editor

If you’re anything like me and you have an iconing problem and therefore have hundreds of icons to edit at a time, this method probably isn’t for you. But if you’re the type of person that has a modicum of restraint and only has a few dozen icons, then this method should work just fine for you. It does give a few extra options that the batch editor doesn’t.

So, first things first. Open your base icon in the photo editor. If you want to edit light levels or anything else, best to do it before adding the overlay otherwise you’ll be adjusting your added color instead. On the right side of the screen click the grayscale option for coloring (red box). If you don’t want your icons to be monochrome and instead just want to add a tint to your icons you can skip this step. Then, open the Adjustments tab (blue box).

Scroll down in the adjustments tab until you find the Color Fill option.

This will open the Color Fill pop up. You can adjust the color, blend mode, and level of opacity as you see fit. Higher opacity means a more intense color, and you can see a few of the different blend options below.

The other option in this pop up is the mask option. This lets you apply the overlay to parts of the image instead of the whole thing. The default is a circular overlay in the center, but you can change the shape (triangle, line, free draw) by choosing the options on the right and the position/dimensions of the overlay area by clicking and dragging on the image. You can also invert the areas by checking the invert mask box.

When you’re done, click apply to apply the changes. You can apply one color fill on top of another for different color effects, but you may want to try the batch editor method instead because you can preview and change things easier. From here you can go ahead with any other edits, whether it be resizing or adding a frame or what have you.

Note that if you want to try something different, you can try Pattern Fill as well, which is right next to Color Fill in the Adjustments menu. The pop up is essentially the same, except instead of color you choose a pattern and there is a slide to adjust the scale of the pattern.

Method Two: Batch Editor

[EDIT: A recent update now allows blend mode to be changed for figures in the same way as images have been able to in the past. For this reason, you can skip the part about making a template and instead skip to the part about the batch editor if you wish to still get the same effect. You would just insert a figure instead of an image and adjust the color of the figure in the pop up.]

As I mentioned before, if you have way too many icons like I do, this is probably the method for you unless you want to spend hours using the photo editor. There are a few trade offs with this method. You cannot do masks in the same manner and there aren’t as many blend mode options, but if you’re layering overlays on top of one another it makes it a lot easier to preview and change things.

We’re actually going to start in the photo editor for this method to make the template for the overlay. So, click the three dots in the bottom right corner and choose New... from the menu.

There are a few ways to set up your template. For now, I’m just going to cover the solid color because that’s the easiest way to understand the process. For solid color, the size of the new image doesn’t matter. Click on the color box and choose the color you want for your overlay--in this case, I’m doing orange. Be sure the slider (opacity) is all the way to the right and then click okay.

Now we have a big orange square and no need to do any further editing so go ahead and save it as you wish.

It doesn’t hurt to make a few different templates of the same color in different shades just so you have options when you get into the batch editor. I personally have a folder where I save all of my textures and miscellaneous templates so I always have them on hand. You’ll notice I have quite the rainbow of colors at my disposal.

With that taken care of, we can switch over to the batch editor. If you’re not familiar with it, I’ll point you to my batch editor tutorial for a rundown of the features as I’m only going to cover what’s relevant to this tutorial. So I’ve loaded the icons I’m working with, gone ahead and resized them, changed the color mode to grayscale, and adjusted the light/color filters to my liking. Under the insert dropdown I’m going to go ahead and add an image--in this case, my template.

When you first insert the template it will be a solid color. Obviously this isn’t going to work if I want to actually see my icons, so I’ll go ahead and change some options in the pop up, notably the blend mode.

First thing you may notice when you go to change the blend mode is that there aren’t as many options as in the photo editor. You can still adjust the opacity, with a higher opacity being a more intense color. One thing to point out is that anything outside the 100x100 dimensions I’ve resized my icons to will be cut off, which means the dark square around the icon where the template goes past the edge in the preview will not appear in the final product. I’ve decided I like the way Multiply looks with these icons so I’m going to go ahead and save them.

Now it’s time to try something a little crazy. Back in the insert drop down I went ahead and added a pink template for kicks and changed the blend mode to color dodge to get this effect. Note that the pink template was loaded on top of the orange template. If I choose, I can swap them by sending the pink template to the back using the highlighted option on the pop up.

The top row is pink on top of orange while the bottom row is orange on top of pink, nothing about their properties changed aside from their relative positions. Of course, if you continued to mess with the blend mode and opacity of the two you could generate several different outcomes. This is also why I mentioned earlier that it can be useful to have multiple shades of the same color: you can layer the shades on top of one another to tune your icons to the color outcome you want.

*Batch Editor Extras*

Shapes: If you want to make shaped icons, you will have to run your icons through the batch editor twice. Once to add the overlay and then a second time to shape the colored icons. Just be sure to remove all settings except the frame for the second batch. If you try to run them all through once, the template color will fill the transparent margin between the image and the 100x100 edge.

Transparent Textures: You can use the overlay technique for more than just coloring. Combine textures with colors for different effects. How everything is layered will impact how they will turn out.

Shaping Templates: You can also change the shape of a template in the object pop up. Adjusting the level of roundness rounds the corners while under the shapes tab you can choose from a variety of shapes. Then just resize on the image as you like. In this way you can make something similar to a color fill mask in the photo editor.

Other Templates: Solid color isn’t your only option when first making a template. You can choose a pattern fill instead of a fill color when you create a new image. You can also make a transparent image (slider to the left in the new image window) and insert objects or text or use the pen tool to create something different.

To resize a large image on Photoscape:

Step 001: drag your image or copy/paste your image onto Photoscape’s editor mode.

Step 002: Underneath the heading of home you will see your different drop down menu options. Click on the arrow that points down beside “resize” as you can see in the above picture.

You will see many different options here - for example, “reduce the longer length: 600px”. You can experiment with these until you find a size that is perfect for what you’re looking for. Here is an example outcome:

To crop a large image into an icon:

Step 001:  drag your image or copy/paste your image onto Photoscape’s editor mode.

Step 002: Click the heading Crop which is above above the “No frame”, and next to “Home,” | “Object” | “Tools”. Click the option ‘Assign ratio/size’ and set it to 100 width/100 Height as seen in my previous tutorial. Then move the cursor till you have the icon you desire.

Step 003: Hit enter, or press crop.

Step 004: Underneath the heading of home you will see your different drop down menu options. Click on the arrow that points down beside “resize” as you can see in the above picture.You will see many different options here, the one you’re looking for the standard icon size is “reduce the longer length: 100px”.

Step 005: Select this option and then you can save/save as.

End outcome:

Part 1: Making Base Icons

The first thing you’re going to need is your source images from which to make icons, whether saved on your computer or copy/pasted from somewhere. I’m working from screencaps I previously took, so when I go into the photo editor I navigate to the folder they’re in using the navigation pane on the left side. Clicking on an image in the bottom left pane brings it up in the editor. On the right side of the screen choose crop. 

You’ll get a pop up of preset ratios you can crop your image to as well as options for custom ratios/dimensions and free cropping. I intend to make 100x100 icons when all is said and done, so I've chosen the 1x1 option. Then click and drag on the image to select what you want to keep and click crop at the bottom of the pop up.

And now we have a base icon! We should save it. You can click the save button in the bottom right corner of the screen or ctrl+s.

To save, you’ll get this pop up window. If you want to overwrite the source image with your newly cropped one, click the first “save” option. “save to” saves to a specified folder with the image under the same name. “save as” lets you change the name and also choose what folder it saves to. How you save and name your base icons is completely up to you but I personally have a “dump” folder set as my “save to” option and save them that way for the sake of expediency because of how often I do this. 

Now go back to the beginning and repeat until finished with all source images.

Part 2: Editing

Now that we have all of our base icons, we’ll switch to the Batch Editor. You can either drag your images from the folder into the center (ctrl+a will select all in the folder to be dragged at once) or you can click open in the bottom right corner and do so that way.  The image in the center acts as a preview and will display any changes you make. In the scroll box above it you can click on a different icon to change the preview image. On the right you’ll see several drop down menus. I’m not going to cover the crop section because I never use it, but we’ll go through the others.

Resize. You’ll see several options for how to resize your images. I find it’s easiest to adjust the width so I have it set to 100 and the image will resize accordingly.

Color Mode. Pretty self explanatory.

Filter. Allows you to adjust all kinds of light and color settings. It’s just a matter of playing around until you find something you like. 

Film. This section gives you many options for further coloring and other effects. These can be layered on top of each other by using multiple slots at once. When you use the editor for the first time, all of the slots will have + instead of a check box. To see all of the options, click the + or (once you’ve used a slot) check the box and click the film selection to change it.

This, unfortunately, is one of the places where I wish I had the full version of the program because you’ll notice as you scroll through that a majority of the options are marked ‘pro’, meaning you’ll have to shell out $30 to use them all. But the free version still gives you a decent amount to work with. At the top of this popup you can choose the type of effect you want to add and it will switch to a different tab to show you those options. At the bottom you can use the slider to adjust the amount of the effect. Depending on what type of effects you’re looking at you’ll also see some other options (flipping/rotation in the light leaks tab, for example). When you’re satisfied, click apply.

As I mentioned earlier, you can layer multiple effects on top of each other by using multiple slots in the Film drop down. For example: two film effects and then a texture.

Part 3: Frame

The next two drop downs are Insert and Frame. For the sake of this tutorial I’m going to go a little out of order and talk about Frame first. You’ll notice that there is only one slot for this section which means you can only choose one of these options at a time. This is the first option for adding borders, though not the route I personally go. In the pop-up, the frames tab has a bunch of pre-made frames you can choose from, some with extra options that will appear below the scroll-box with the frames. The borders tab lets you round corners and add simple borders and shadows. I don’t have a lot of experience with this option so you’ll have to mess around with it yourself if you want to go that route.

If you want to make circle icons, the shapes tab is where you can do so. There are also a plethora of other shapes you can choose from as well; all the basic and speech bubble shapes are included in the free version and one shape in each of the other groups as well. When you choose a shape, you can choose either a solid color, a pattern, or transparent background. Also, if you choose to follow my border technique covered below, you may want to increase the margin (slider to the left) so as not to cut part of your border off.

When you’re satisfied with your choice, click apply.

Part 4: Insert

Now we’ll double back to Insert. Again, we have several slots here to work with like we did in the Film section so we can have more than one object. When you click the + you’ll be presented with these choices. 

Sticker. Gives you the option of inserting clipart that comes with the program. When you select one you’ll be able to move/adjust the sticker however you wish on the preview image. 

Image. This allows you to insert images saved on your computer as an object on your icons. This could be a symbol that represents your muse or even a custom texture or pre-made border. If you search through various graphics/rph tags you can find a lot of pre-made borders and textures to put on top of icons like this post. Once you insert the image you can move/adjust as you see fit.

Clipboard Image. Same as Image except it’s whatever you’ve got on your clipboard.

Figure. Lets you insert a host of shapes and figures. This is how I make my borders, so I’m going to go through it in that context. When you first click figures you’ll get the window below. Because I’ve made my icons circular, I’m going to choose the hollow circle on top to insert that figure. If I was doing square, for example, I’d choose the hollow square.

Once I’ve inserted the image, I adjust it to the correct size by clicking and dragging the edges and center it by clicking on the middle bubble in the square of the top left of the pop up (you may have to click a different bubble and then click the middle to get it to work). Then I start editing using the other options. (Side note that the pop up is essentially what the options for sticker and image look like with a few minor differences.)

Here’s a run down of the options that I regularly adjust:

Color: You can either make the fill a solid color or a pattern.

Type: Allows you to change the figure from a solid line to dotted/dashed lines.

Thickness and Opacity: Adjust sliders to adjust thickness and opacity.

Outline: Adds an outline to the figure. Allows you to adjust color and thickness.

Outer Glow: Adds a glow to the outside of the figure. Allows you to adjust color, thickness, and amount of blurring.

Gradient: Changes the fill color to a gradient. If you came for the rainbow borders, your time has come! Under this drop down you have three options for coloring: preset gradient, two color, and single color. You can also adjust the angle of the gradient by using the angle slider.

If you click the first option you’ll be presented with all the preset gradients. Below the scroll box you can adjust the chosen gradient by moving the sliders along the bar. Below that you can adjust the opacity of different parts of the gradient by dragging the line down at a specific point, with the top of the box being 100% opacity and the bottom being 0%.

For the second and third options, you can click the boxes to choose the color(s) you want to use. To the right of the color options are the options for how the colors appear in the gradient. Pictured is the two color options, the single color options are similar.

Text. Allows you to insert text. As you’ll notice, many of the options are the same as those of the other objects with the addition of text specific options. You can type your text in the black text box (has a G in the picture) and change your font and size, bold/italic/underline/strikethrough, text alignment, and color. 

Step 5: Save and Enjoy!

Before you save, make sure to check the preview for all of the icons to make sure they’re to your liking by either clicking on them individually or scrolling through using your arrow keys. Then click the save button in the bottom right corner or ctrl+s.

And you get this save pop up. I have my save location set as an output subfolder (which Photoscape will automatically create) in the folder the base images are currently in, but you can save them to the same folder or choose a custom folder as well. Other options allows you to choose the image format and (if you’ve chosen jpg) the quality of the image. As for naming, I prefer to use the Advanced Naming tab and choosing <sequence> from the drop down menu as this will name/save the icons in numerical order. In the picture I also have ‘a’ as a prefix for something I was doing earlier and forgot to change. So with the settings I have below, my icons saved to the ...garnet\output folder as a001.png, a002.png, a003.png, a004.png, and a005.png.

**EDIT: If you are making shaped icons with a transparent background, DO NOT save as a JPEG because the format does not support transparent pixels and it will replace them with white instead. I’d recommend PNG in that case.

Be sure to check your icons before you exit the program by either looking at them in your photo viewer or uploading a couple to a draft just to see how they’ll look on the dash. Sometimes things look a little different between the preview in the batch editor and the saved version.

In the event that you want to make more icons in the future, it’s useful to save your settings so that everything stays exactly the same with your next batch. Click on the three dots next to the save button and then save settings on the menu. Then just give your settings a name and you’re ready to go for next time! All you’ll have to do is click load settings instead and select your saved settings.

First we crop our frame.

Choose your first frame. This is the one that I have chosen.

Now Open Up Photoscape.

Select EDITOR from the taskbar.

Drag and drop your chosen frame.

Select the Crop option from the task-bar above ‘No Frame’.

Select the drop down menu > assign ratio/size.

Check size setting.

Change width/height to 100.

Click ok.

Highlight your crop area on the image by adjusting the squares.

Hit enter or select crop.

On the task-bar choose Home.

Select Resize.

Select Preserve Aspect Ratio and type 100.

Hit enter or select OK.

Select Save As, save your icon. Congrats you have made your BASE.

It will look like this:

Now we move onto EDITING our icon.

Select BATCH EDITOR from the taskbar.

From your windows folder drag and drop into Photoscape.

Resize > Crop > Width/Height: 90.

Check: Apply Margin & Round > Modify.

Background Colour: White.

Round (Pixel): 0

Check Assign same margins > Margin: 5

Click OK.

Select Object from the Task-bar.

Photo 1 > ... > Photo... 

Select the border you wish to use. Here is a selection of different colours that you can download here.

Open.

YOU CAN HIT CONVERT NOW, OR, YOU CAN ADD A FILTER/EDIT THE ICON.

To edit the icon, select Filter.

Mess around with the different options until you are happy. You can see what I chose in the provided example below:

Now we select convert ; or convert all. And our icon will save like this:

Step 1: Using either the Editor or Batch Editor (depending on how many you plan to make) or even some other program entirely, make multiple sets of icons in however many colors/styles you want to incorporate into your image. For the example, I went ahead and made a blue icon and a green icon, but you could easily include more than two.

Step 2: Switch over to Create GIF and load the icon pairs as frames.

Adjust the Duration of each frame to your liking and set the Transition Effect to Dissolve for all frames.

From there, just hit save and you’re done! It can get a little tedious depending on how many icons you plan to make, but if you’re anything like me it’ll help you reconsider just how many you really need.

And don’t be afraid to mess around and get creative with your style! You can even make circular icons or any other host of shapes, but transitions between different shapes don’t seem to turn out well so I’d suggest sticking to one shape overall.

Step 1: Gather your screencaps.

There are plenty of tutorials out there for getting screencaps and I tend to go back and forth between two different methods. The screencaps I took for this tutorial followed this method for VLC player. Sometimes I also use Free Studio’s Video to JPEG Converter (tutorial) with settings to save every 1 frame.

(Optional) Step 2: Crop your screencaps using GIMP.

As mentioned in the intro, if you don’t want to download the extra program or the plug-in, you can skip this part. It is possible to crop your frames using Photoscape’s batch editor but I find this is much simpler, especially if you’re doing multiple gifs at a time. For the sake of giving you multiple options, I will cover the Photoscape cropping method further on.

So, with GIMP open, I’m going to go ahead and open my frames. Be sure to use Open as Layers and NOT just the Open options, otherwise it will open all of your frames in individual windows instead of in the same image and you’ll have to close all those windows and it will be a pain.

Using the Open Image as Layers box, I’ll go ahead and navigate to the folder I have my screencaps saved in and select them all (ctrl + a) and click open.

GIMP will then load all of my frames into a project for me. Depending on how many frames you have and how fast your computer is, this may take a little while. Using the rectangle selection tool from my toolbar, I’m going to select the part of the frame I want to use in my gif. It’s best to have an idea of the motion in your sequence because all frames will be cropped in the same way and you don’t want half of your action happening in the margins you just cropped off. 

To crop, go to the Image menu and choose Crop to Selection

And viola! My frames have now been cropped how I want them.

Now I’ll go ahead and save my frames. This is where the Export Layers plug-in comes in handy because without it your only option would be to change layer visibility one at a time and individually save every layer and that would just be tedious. Instead, we can just choose Export Layers in the file menu.

In the Export Layers window, I’ll go ahead and select the folder I want to save my frames in. At the bottom of the window you can change the file extension if you wish, but I generally leave it as png. Then click Export Layers at the bottom of the window and Export in the second window that appears.

Step 3: Edit your frames.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking: you’re already in GIMP, why not just use that to edit frames and make the gif? Well, I still barely know what I’m doing in GIMP half the time and if you’re new to it, it can be a bit overwhelming. There are plenty of other tutorials out there for that if you want to explore it.

All that said, it’s time to go back to my favorite part of Photoscape: the batch editor. If you decided not to go the GIMP route for cropping, here’s your second option. Go ahead and drag your screencaps into the batch editor.

The first dropdown on the right side of the screen is the Crop option. Instead of drawing the box to select what you want to save for your frames, you adjust the margins on each side of the image. If you’re just planning to crop willy-nilly this isn’t too bad, but if you’re aiming for a specific aspect ratio (1x1 for instance) it takes a little more work. At the bottom of the screen it will show what the dimensions of your edited image are. Once you have it cropped the way you’d like you can also resize the image as you wish.

With that all taken care of, it’s time to color and further edit the frames. If you’re unfamiliar with the batch editor, I’ll direct you to this tutorial. As for coloring specifically, I’ll direct you to this tutorial. Also, if you want to add captions to your gif you can do so by inserting a text object in the batch editor. If you’re using X you can also do so later on in the gif maker, but you’re limited to white text with a black outline.

Step 4: Put it all together.

With frames edited, I’ll switch to the Create GIF tab and drag my edited frames into the editor. It’s hard to tell on a static screencap, but the center image is the work-in-progress preview for you gif. The top part shows your frames, which you can delete individually to shorten the time or change the flow of your gif to your liking. Like the other editors, your options for editing gifs are on the right.

First option is the duration of each frame. I usually set mine to 0.05 seconds for all frames, but you can also set it for individual frames.

Next is transition effects. If you want the gif to play normally (like a movie clip) then choose none. These can be set for individual frames, so you could even make the last frame something special with everything else normal if you wanted.

Ideally you resized your frames in the batch editor, but if necessary you can change it using the size settings. Next is the text option. As I said earlier, your options are limited so if you want to add captions you’re better off doing so in the batch editor. You can choose the font and the size and whether or not the text has a black outline as well as it’s location on your gif.

When everything is set to your liking, you can go ahead and save (bottom right of the screen or ctrl+s). You’ll then see this window. This shows you the final preview of your gif--what it will actually look like when you post it somewhere. Generally, the final preview will be faster than your work-in-progress preview. If it’s too fast or too slow, you can exit the window and adjust your duration and check it again. It will also show you the size of your gif. For reaction images, it’s best to keep the gif under 2MB as that’s the limit for text posts, but the limit for gifs in photosets is 3MB. And you can change the number of loops if you want but. . .why would you only want it to loop a couple of times when you can stare at it forever?

Just click save and congratulations, you’ve made a gif! Not too bad, right?

{★} You want to make sure you click ‘page’ for this, as this is where the templates are stored.

{★} Second, make sure you look for the template with the two spaces, that’s the look we’re going for. 

{★} So you want to make sure to change your size. I usually go for 600x600 but the choice is yours. 

{★} Next is adding the images. You want to make sure you go to the folder where you have your images you want to use are stored.

{★} Once you’ve found them, simply drag each one separately to one of the boxes. They should just automatically go in. You can resize  each image if you click once on one of the images to stretch it etc. 

 {★} Now onto the fun part; making it pretty! Click the ‘edit’ button at the top to go into edit mode. 

{★} Welcome to the edit menu! As you can see there are a lot of options you can play with. Take your time and go through them to customise and colour your image. If you make a mistake, there are undo buttons at the bottom right.

{★} Once you are happy with your edit, now it’s time to add your text and such. Click the ‘T’ icon. 

 {★} This is the text menu.Type out your text and click ‘ok’ once you are done. You can also resize & rotate the text by clicking on the text once it’s on your image.