tipping, cropping tutorial, PS7

mzzgoddessblue asked for a basic cropping tutorial. Let's see how well this does.

Full-graphic tutorial inside the cut, showing different ways of cropping 100x100 base images out of a full-sized cap, which can then be used to make lovely icons.

:: and more!



Okay. So, I started with this image:



Of the beautiful and furry Ron Livingston as Lewis Nixon in Band of Brothers. First, a basic crop. Getcher rectangular marquee tool and set it to a fixed aspect ratio of 100x100, and select a square of any size, like so:



Then go to Image --> Crop, and all the extra image will disappear. Then Image --> Image Size, where you'll get a dialog box allowing you to resize your image. Make sure the "Constrain Proportions" checkbox is checked, and then if you type 100px into either the height or the width fields, your image will snap to a neat 100x100 px.



And, with that, our first Nix crop:

NOW, sometimes a girl wants to tip an image, set it at a slightly different angle. So, we return to our initial, uncropped Nix image, like we started with last time. Then, to Image --> Rotate Canvas, and if you don't want to rotate exactly 90 degrees, select Arbitrary.



You'll get a dialog box asking how many degrees you want to tip your image. I sent Nix 7 degrees clockwise, and I got this:



THEN, as before, get a rectangular marquee tool set to a fixed aspect ratio and select a square of Nix, and crop, like so:



Now, you see, some of the background (here a lovely olive color) still shows up, since the square I cropped went outside the boundaries of the Nix base image. Never fear! Go to the control panel and grab the Smudge tool (the little pointy finger), like so:



I smudged the color of Nix's jacket down into the green of the background, and, when resized, had a square Nix that looked pretty damned good:



Erasers, brushes and text work wonders to cover up any imperfections and blemishes in a smudged section, too. But that's another tutorial, for another time.

Bottom line, any part of a base image can be used in an icon with the right amount of cropping, smudging, nudging, sharpening, zooming, and whatnot. I made a couple of other 100x100 squares off this Nix base just for kicks. The closeup:



Or the very far away:



That one was made by using the regular selection tool (as opposed to the fixed aspect ratio) and copying a large part of the Nix picture and then resizing it to 100px width. It ended up being only 71px in height, so I pasted it into a new 100x100 blank image, as above, and went to my trusty smudge tool to pull down the color from the top image. Ended up with this:



Blurry, and not perfect, but, again, brushes, erasers, effects and text can make a damned good icon where you'd never notice the smudgy imperfections of the base image.

And ya ha! Base images! Ready to be tweaked and played with and brightened, colorized, layered and texted for all your icon-making needs.