hey! you may not remember me, but at one stage last year i asked how you did your icon. i found the bit where i stuffed up, but that was it. could you please explain (if you have the time) how to correctly get the white border? thank you so much x
yes, of course!! i’ll organize it in a bullet list and bold important parts so it’s easier to read as a step-by-step bc i can get a bit rambly sometimes. i’m also gonna publish this if you don’t mind, just in case anyone else has seen tumblr icons like these that they’ve wanted to create on their own:
first, i typically remove the entire background of the photo i’ve selected. for example, in my current icon of Jack, i removed anything in the photo that wasn’t Jack. i prefer to use the quick selection tool to select parts i want to erase and then get more precise with the eraser tool. you should have the ‘centerpiece’ of your icon on a completely white background after this.
next, select the centerpiece. you can just Ctrl+Click on the image in the layers list of your PSD, or you can manually select it using the quick selection tool. sometimes i’ll do it manually if my erasing job was a bit choppy, just to make it more precise
once you have selected whatever is the focus of your icon, go to Select > Modify... > Expand... > and enter the value you want to expand it by. this is important because it will become the thickness of your white border. if you want a thick border, go larger. if you want a thin border, go smaller. i typically go somewhere between 2 or 5.
note: if you expand it by a certain amount of pixels and want the border thicker, repeat the process again and type another value. if you expand and it’s too thick and you want it thinner, follow the same steps as before (Select > Modify) but click on Contract instead.
now you have your white border!
your next step is to copy this immediately. i’ve gone through pain losing what i have selected by clicking on a tool that deselects it and it’s a minor inconvenience, but it still sucks. so Ctrl+C that thing asap.
next, what i typically do is open the background i want in a different PSD (make any edits/colour changes to the background over there if you want to do any of that) and paste the selected/copied image on top of it.
you should have your main image with the white border on top of your background now.
if your background was too big, you might have to crop it. if your background is too small and your selected image ends up being cut off, you might have to resize that image. (i hope that’s not confusing omg)
NOW if you’re looking at your white border and going “huh. this looks kind of flat.” you have the option to spice things up a little. NOTE that this step is completely optional. i have made tons of icons WITHOUT doing this, and some WITH this. it depends on your background and the photo you’re using, and just generally how you want it to look.
make sure the photo with the white border is selected (again, select this by Ctrl+Clicking on it in the layers menu), then go to Layer > Layer Style. from here, you have the option of multiple layer styles to give your image a 3D/raised effect. you can mess around with these to your liking, but for icons (given that they’re so small, it’s kind of useless to put a lot of detail into this step) i typically keep it simple by choosing Drop Shadow and then just adding a black or coloured shadow behind the layer. mess with the details until you like what you see.
voila! you’re done! you can make any minor changes if you want, but if you’re pleased, save the document as a PSD (trust me, this is also important. sometimes i’ll upload a tumblr icon and realize that it’s too big or too small or not zoomed in/out enough. having the PSD saved is such a necessity for any changes in the future). then save the actual photo file itself, which i typically save as a PNG bc i like the quality the best.
i hope this helps!!! i will add that i’m writing this all from memory so if i have anything wrong or if something doesn’t work correctly, please let me know so i can fix it :)
