rounded edges effect for PS
I stumbled on this community a few days ago and thought it was really cool and helpful. I've recently gotten into making icons, so I thought I'd try my hand at a tutorial.
This tutorial will be for a rounded edges effect, like these icons have:
Go ahead and make your icon... add effects, brushes, whatever you're going to do. I'll be working on this Natalie Portman icon:
(as for the effects I used for this icon, it's just a brown/gold gradient set to Lighten, one of my burnt wood textures set to Screen, a Lens Flare filter, and a tiny text brush)
After you've got all the effects you want, flatten your icon. Now go to Layer ---> New ---> Layer From Background. Make a new layer, and fill it with a color that matches your icon... there's a lot of orange in my icon, so I chose a dark orange color.
Drag the color layer underneath your icon. Now create another new layer over your icon and fill it with black (and for this, it HAS to be black... #000000).
Select your Rectangle Marquee tool and set the Feather to 10-15 pixels. Drag the Marquee tool so that it covers the entire icon. If you've set the Feather, it should appear rounded. Now fill that area with white (make sure it's real white... #FFFFFF).
Now either go to Image ---> Adjustments ---> Levels... or just hit the shortcut CTRL+L on your keyboard to open the Levels menu. Change the Input Levels from whatever they are to 120, 1.00, and 140, respectively. Leave the Output Levels as they are and hit OK. The edges of the white should now be clean instead of feathered.
Use the Magic Wand tool to select the white area, the right-click and choose "select inverse" from the pop-down menu. The black area should now be highlighted. Delete the black & white layer, and select your icon. Hit delete. Your icon should now have rounded edges, and the color behind it should be showing through.
That's pretty much it. If you'd like, you can go to Edit ---> Transform ---> Rotate and rotate your icon slightly for an off-center look.
You can also forego making a color layer at all and save your icon as a rounded .gif with transparency if you like. Enjoy :)
This tutorial will be for a rounded edges effect, like these icons have:
Go ahead and make your icon... add effects, brushes, whatever you're going to do. I'll be working on this Natalie Portman icon:
(as for the effects I used for this icon, it's just a brown/gold gradient set to Lighten, one of my burnt wood textures set to Screen, a Lens Flare filter, and a tiny text brush)
After you've got all the effects you want, flatten your icon. Now go to Layer ---> New ---> Layer From Background. Make a new layer, and fill it with a color that matches your icon... there's a lot of orange in my icon, so I chose a dark orange color.
Drag the color layer underneath your icon. Now create another new layer over your icon and fill it with black (and for this, it HAS to be black... #000000).
Select your Rectangle Marquee tool and set the Feather to 10-15 pixels. Drag the Marquee tool so that it covers the entire icon. If you've set the Feather, it should appear rounded. Now fill that area with white (make sure it's real white... #FFFFFF).
Now either go to Image ---> Adjustments ---> Levels... or just hit the shortcut CTRL+L on your keyboard to open the Levels menu. Change the Input Levels from whatever they are to 120, 1.00, and 140, respectively. Leave the Output Levels as they are and hit OK. The edges of the white should now be clean instead of feathered.
Use the Magic Wand tool to select the white area, the right-click and choose "select inverse" from the pop-down menu. The black area should now be highlighted. Delete the black & white layer, and select your icon. Hit delete. Your icon should now have rounded edges, and the color behind it should be showing through.
That's pretty much it. If you'd like, you can go to Edit ---> Transform ---> Rotate and rotate your icon slightly for an off-center look.
You can also forego making a color layer at all and save your icon as a rounded .gif with transparency if you like. Enjoy :)