Icon Making is Serious Business!

Monitor contrast

synnesai — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 00:58:50 GMT

I hope someone can help me!

I didn't know where else to ask to be honest, so~! My old laptop recently just died on me so I got a new one. Unforntunately, the contrast on the monitor is so high, my graphics from before look like crap! (Actually pretty much any graphic looks weird)

But I do not know how to change my contrast! Usually there's a button on the keyboard, but all there is in a brightness control. I tried using this calibrater, but all it tells me "Using the contrast tool, adjust..." and I'm like "WHAT TOOL?!!?!?!??!??!!!"

So is there any way anyone knows of to help?

Er, I have an HP G42 I guess? Hmm...i'm not really sure....

Thank you so much to anyone who can help me ^u^

A quick question regarding whether or not I should ask someone to credit me.

boycunt — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:06:36 GMT

All right, so one of my icons is an animated .gif that I made from a flash file. I did not make the original flash file (in fact, I do not know the maker of the original flash file, however, I do have a "original artist unknown" note underneath the icon). However, I did decompile the .swf into frames, and I shrunk these frames/compressed them so they were icon size.

That being said, do I have the right to ask for credit for this icon? Or should I just leave it alone, since I did not make the flash I took it from?

What Text is this??

illicit_ — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:56:28 GMT

I made this icon a while back, feel free to take but credit me, and i had to wipe out my computer, and I lost all of my files. BUmmer huh? Haha
ANd well, i loved this font. If anyone can tell me the name of this font or where i can download it, i would greatly appreciate it!
:)

This font has a "dashed" appearence to it.
Its thin Lines.

talim — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:05:12 GMT

I'm starting to think that there needs to be a community for people to post icons that they've made and are unsure about. Like... basically, "Am I out of my damn mind or is this actually decent?", haha. I've made two or three icons like that just in the past couple of weeks and I feel weird about posting them anywhere. :( Useful: Y/N? I'm thinking it could be pretty helpful.

tiger_tyger — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:41:01 GMT

Recently I've had quite a few members of my icon comm ask whether I would be willing to take commissions for icons and banners if they paied me. As I make icons and graphics for fun generally, I was wondering what the going rate was that people charge in money or paied account time for that kind of service?

PNG or JPEG?

love_jackianto — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:52:05 GMT

I know this is a real newbie question, but what is the best file format to save icons as? I've heard that you're supposed to save them as PNGs, but I've seen a lot of JPEG icons. I'm very confused.

Does it make a difference, which file type you should them as, if you put text on an icon?

Trends?

linear_flower — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:18:01 GMT

What makes a trendy icon right now?

You see, I want to get out of my icon making bubble (which consists of making, essentially, bases) so I'm probably making a claim at 10x10variated, since I'm forced to follow rules and do things I'm not used to doing in Photoshop.

Well, one of the rules is to make 10 icons using the popular trends at the time... and since I'm in an icon making bubble (and just put icon_tutorial back on my f-list), I have no idea what they are right now!

I'm pretty sure selective coloring (until skin is radioactive and lips are orange lol) is still in, but what else?

Monitor Display Size Question.

love_jackianto — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:51:55 GMT

I just found this comm so I'd thought I'd ask a question that has been bothering for a while.

Does the display size of a monitor really make that much difference with icons? Does a monitor with a display size of 1024 x 768 (that's the size of my monitor) make an icon look different than a 1280 x 1024 monitor?

Query

cynicalsnark — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:34:51 GMT

I was just wondering if many people used laptops to make icons or graphics in general? I just switched from a regular desktop screen to a laptop and the brightness is rather jarring. If anyone has any pointers on making icons and not making them glaringly bright or really dull on other monitors, it'll be appreciated. =)

I fear I should know it.

mad_tenshi — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:57:00 GMT

But what exactly does "anti alias" and how do you use it?

Thoughts on seprate Icon Communities

rosy_nic — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:12:16 GMT

This has been on my mind for a long time.

I have been thinking to make an Icon community for my icons, even though I have been making for 8 months or having a seprate Icon journal and then making my one at the moment friends only. Even though when I post personal enteries I get no comments?

Any thoughs cause I'm very confused on what to do, where I make a community or keeping going at my present journal.

Brushes v. Textures

iconcheezburger — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:10:51 GMT

Now, I know the technical difference. I can import and use and fuss with both. Generally I prefer textures over brushes because I can see them in my Textures folder and I don't have to load all of them everything I open Photoshop and I just feel they're more flexible. Clearly there's got to be another side of this, so pros and cons of both. Discuss.

Icon Journal Question

choke — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:15:53 GMT

What are the pros and cons of having a members-only icon/graphics/resource journal, and having an unlocked one?

I am debating whether or not to make mine members-only.

The pro I came up with for members-only, is that more people would join, because they had to, to see my stuff, but the con I came up with was people being aggravated because they can't see my stuff without joining, even though I have an "examples" post.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Sooo... anything new?

kizzmon — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:42:01 GMT

I made some icons after months and months of break from iconing... and I'm like, dude. I'm old fashioned now. I use old brushes, old textures, old styles... so guys, what's NEW? Good way or bad way new. You know how icon styles change. What's HOT at the moment? :)

On the Suject of Headers and Banners

chibihalo — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:53:13 GMT

A topic in another icon related community got me to thinking about headers and banners. People in that discussion claim that headers and banners are so hard to do that it takes them hours to complete just one. This leads me to believe that everyone else who makes headers are always creating image blends for their journal and user info headers. I wonder when the standard of header and banner making became that they had to be image blends. I myself make banners and headers for journals, userinfo sections, and forum use and yet I have yet to use an image blend on a large graphic. I maintained in my contribution to the conversation that good headers and banners can be made with the same techniques used for icons just applied to a larger scale. Larger versions of brushes, textures, and patterns can be applied along with the same coloring techniques can be used without the need for complex blends each and every time a person creates headers and banners. What I wonder is when it became blends only for larger graphics? If a banner or header lacks a blended image is it instantly not a good graphic when it contains beautiful coloring, patterns, textures, and brushes? Can an icon tutorial really be applied to a larger graphic or is it frowned upon to not use a banner tutorial for banners?

I get the feeling that there are some people in the iconing world who work with large graphics that believe icon techniques cannot be applied to banners and headers because they must contain image blends. I also get the feeling that these same people feel a large graphic without an image blend isn't a good graphic. Is this true or just my misinterpretation of what's being said in other discussion? Where do you stand on the ease of making larger graphics

I am pondering about this for a while

mad_tenshi — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:06:28 GMT

I am working on simple coloring technics I haven't seen before and so far I am quite pleased with what I achieved *points at icon*. But when you make icons, do you think it's more important to follow trends and get a lot of people using your icons or making your own thing and not being someone who does what the others do, even though you wouldn't be successful with it?

Furthermore I ponder how "trends" are even created, when you see how people go after selective colors and other fancy things treated icons nowadays, whereas simple colour layers were the thing to use a few months ago. Trends come and go faster than you change your socks it seems.

VectorMagic

phinjay — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:03:09 GMT

Vector imaging is fun. It's also a complex method to learn. While perusing a scrapbooking newsgroup, I found this, VectorMagic, an online tool for vectorization of images. It's simple to work with, and lots of fun. Hope this helps someone!

Lack of creativity?

mad_tenshi — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:50:56 GMT

So OK I am making an icon and a lot of people would say it's fine, it's simple but fine as it is. But I always want to add more stuff to it, because I think that the "cherry on the top" is missing.

Take this for example...

an icon I am working on just now. 15 min actual working time and after that 2 hours blank staring at the icon to ponder what things I could add to it. Border? Text? Repeat the image? Whatever-funky-thing? One part of me is satisfied with the result and the other part thinks that I must do more to it.

Anybody else having this problem? *sigh*

Fake Cuts?

allforyou_x3 — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:27:46 GMT

Hi there, iconchat! I'm really curious about what other iconists' opinions are on fake cuts. I don't usually do fake cuts when I cross-post, I just do regular cuts. But then I looked at my own icon journal, and I realized that I have minimal comments there, because people comment on the actual entries (and for good reason). But my journal isn't f-locked or anything, so I kinda feel like fake cuts would be pointless. what do you think?

Resource organization

marysia — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 03:10:55 GMT

Hi everyone! The most recent post reminded me of a somewhat similar issue I have.

I've been making icons and other graphics for several years now, and have amassed quite a collection of brushes, textures, etc. My main issue is with textures. I download sets that catch my eye, and store them all in a large folder with many subfolders, each of which is usually the original set the textures came from (i.e. "Light Textures 49 by iconlover"). But I've gotten to the point where I have so many textures I can't keep track of them all! There are a few sets I use a lot, but I have many that get underused simply because I forget I have them.

I don't make many icons anymore, because I tend to be too critical of my own work and get frustrated. I mostly make banners for icontest winners, so it would be helpful to be able to find textures that look like those used in the original icon if the iconmaker doesn't actually provide them for me. I've thought of reorganizing them by category (light textures, textures sorted by color, etc) but that seems like a big task, and then I'd also have to rename them all in order to keep track of who made what...

How does everyone else do it? I'm not a very organized person in general, so these sorts of things don't really come naturally to me.

Resource list

joyfulsong — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:39:57 GMT

So, you'll notice that in my resource list I have little plus signs next to most of the resource makers that link to the resource posts I've downloaded from. The thing is, it's kind of a pain to do that. xD I originally started to make it easier for other people to find the stuff I use. But it's a little cluttery, and is it necessary?

What do you think? Do you guys prefer it or not?

_Aime_Icons_ Is Gone

chibihalo — Wed, 23 May 2007 05:40:30 GMT

I just saw a huge blow to the iconing world here on Livejournal. For some unknown reason _anime_icons_ is completely gone. Over sixteen hundred members dumped and every single mod that has been on staff there cut off without so much as a word to anyone from the original owner. It appears she has changed journals and got a rename token and completely scrapped the entire community. One of the major sources of icon sharing for everyone who makes anime icons is gone. I realize that people want to change directions but I was doing a good job handling things there and would have been glad to take outright posession of the community from the original mod. Now the community is called unplug and I have no information as to why the change was made with no word to anyone. What is going on here?

At least we still have other general anime related icon communities to post stuff to.

dawnydiesel — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:22:57 GMT

Question....

You're making a header and whatnot for a community (that has the potential to be a rather large community). Where would you credit the textures used? I have them already credited in my graphics community userinfo but would you also credit them in the userinfo of the community that the header is actually for? I'm nervous enough about making a header for a community like this but I don't want to screw something simple like credit up...

An even-more-automatic icon table generator

kannnichtfranz — Sun, 13 May 2007 02:46:21 GMT

Hi! This post is about what to do with your icons once you've made them.

As far as I can tell, most methods people use to generate an icon table are tedious, because they involve copying and pasting the URL for each image.

One of the things I like to do is take that sort of tedium and automate it. So I've done that. It involves using Flickr to host your icons, and downloading and using a little program I wrote. I'm kind of curious as to whether it might be useful to others, so I picked this community to unleash it on. For more details and to download the program, please follow the fake cut to my journal.

( My icon publishing endeavors now consist of five steps... )

harmonious — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:58:44 GMT

Why is it that people comment on, say, the post in icons - you know, the one with the teasers and fake cut to my personal icon journal - rather than the icon journal post? I don't mean comments with, "Hey, your HTML is screwed up." I mean, "taking #45!"

Honestly, I'm confused.