Open icon help request!

[conuly]

rainbow_goddess has a number of nice icons, but unfortunately several of them are hard to read. So I thought (with her permission) that I'd beg you all for help.

The really hard ones are this one, this one, and this one, though a number of them could do with a bit of cleaning up in the text/images department. And I have *no* idea how to do this. I wouldn't mind learning, it's theoretically simple enough, right?

Edit: This one's been fixed.

Comments

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

Just curious... does rainbow have the raw (i.e., textless) images available for any of those? The task would be a lot easier if I had those.

[conuly]

I think they're all available at autistics.org in the postcards area.

[wengeue.livejournal.com]

Here are more:





Neither of them are great because the art was not designed for this purpose.

[conuly]

I know, but I thought we could at least make them legible, right?

[wengeue.livejournal.com]

Yes -- hopefully this is better.

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Personally, I cannot stand oddly shaped icons. You have 100 by 100 pixels, so why not use them? It'd certainly help out the text problems. If you have the original pictures, I could redo them to be 100 by 100 .. or if you want, I could find some nice rainbow bases (I'm sure we've got some at OI) and put that text onto them, if you'd like. I refuse to make irregular sized icons.

I should probably make an "icon snob" icon for myself, because that's what I feel like whenever I talk about icons.

[conuly]

They're at autistics.org, under the postcards section.

[wengeue.livejournal.com]

When I made the new icons, I used the same proportions as the original art -- which is vertical postcard shaped. To make them 100x100 would require more changes than I wanted to deal with -- but certainly, it would be better to just scrap these entirely and design something that uses the icon size better.

Also, I didn't even bother with the one that is black and white photos and and says "why cure?" or something like that -- because shrunk down to 100 pixels, you can't tell who the photos are anyway, so why bother? It would be better to choose one of those photos for the icon.

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Just for the record, the issue with the first one (the autistic spectrum one with the stars) is that the text needs to have antialiasing turned on. It's a mistake that's everywhere in icon making. Text just looks smoother when it's antialiased; when it's not, it's pixellated.

(Or is "pixellated" British? Probably, all the pretty double letter words are, like "travelling" and "worshipping.")

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Yes, the anti-aliasing problems are maddening. I still maintain that a lot of the problem lies in their unusual size. The atypical cropping really reduces the room for text. If you had a good image program, Connie, you could fix it very easily yourself. It's simple: open photoshop, PSP or GIMP, get the original image, crop it as you like, and add the words in yourself. She used a pixel font for the first one, though technically I guess you could use any font you liked. It'd look fine as long as you had the proper aliasing.

[conuly]

Even if I did, I'm not sure I'd know how.

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Well, PSP and PS both have free trial versions online. GIMP is free for download. I've never used it, but I've heard that it's comparable to PS and PSP in terms of tools and options. It is very easy to find tutorials for both PSP and PS, less so for GIMP. To crop, you just pretty much click the crop tool on the toolbar and then click and drag on the image 'til you get what you want cropped. If you're not cropping straight to 100by100 you want to crop in a perfect square so that it's even when you resize it. And then you click the text took, click on the image, type what you want, and then you're done!

Of course, that's all very basic. If you actually did have any of the programs, I'm sure ty, xiggy or myself could walk you through it, or you could find an easy tutorial. It is a bit of effort when you can just make other people do it for you, though! I only learned to make icons for myself because I do not have as many technologically savvy friends as you do.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I got Paint Shop Pro in a copy of Scanners for Dummies. It's useless to me. The help files are jargon. I don't understand them at all. Apparently PSP is a tool for people who do professional photo editing (according to the book) so that's why the help files are gibberish.

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

Or, alternatively, one can use fonts designed for use at certain pixel sizes, such as 04B (http://www.dsg4.com/04/extra/bitmap/index.html) and Unibody (http://www.underware.nl/site2/index.php3?id1=unibody&id2=overview)...

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Of course. I overuse some of them, myself. They're just so cute. ^_^

But (as I'm sure you know) pixel fonts should not be antialiased.

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

Just curious... does rainbow have the raw (i.e., textless) images available for any of those? The task would be a lot easier if I had those.

[conuly]

I think they're all available at autistics.org in the postcards area.

[wengeue.livejournal.com]

Here are more:





Neither of them are great because the art was not designed for this purpose.

[conuly]

I know, but I thought we could at least make them legible, right?

[wengeue.livejournal.com]

Yes -- hopefully this is better.

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Personally, I cannot stand oddly shaped icons. You have 100 by 100 pixels, so why not use them? It'd certainly help out the text problems. If you have the original pictures, I could redo them to be 100 by 100 .. or if you want, I could find some nice rainbow bases (I'm sure we've got some at OI) and put that text onto them, if you'd like. I refuse to make irregular sized icons.

I should probably make an "icon snob" icon for myself, because that's what I feel like whenever I talk about icons.

[conuly]

They're at autistics.org, under the postcards section.

[wengeue.livejournal.com]

When I made the new icons, I used the same proportions as the original art -- which is vertical postcard shaped. To make them 100x100 would require more changes than I wanted to deal with -- but certainly, it would be better to just scrap these entirely and design something that uses the icon size better.

Also, I didn't even bother with the one that is black and white photos and and says "why cure?" or something like that -- because shrunk down to 100 pixels, you can't tell who the photos are anyway, so why bother? It would be better to choose one of those photos for the icon.

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Just for the record, the issue with the first one (the autistic spectrum one with the stars) is that the text needs to have antialiasing turned on. It's a mistake that's everywhere in icon making. Text just looks smoother when it's antialiased; when it's not, it's pixellated.

(Or is "pixellated" British? Probably, all the pretty double letter words are, like "travelling" and "worshipping.")

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Yes, the anti-aliasing problems are maddening. I still maintain that a lot of the problem lies in their unusual size. The atypical cropping really reduces the room for text. If you had a good image program, Connie, you could fix it very easily yourself. It's simple: open photoshop, PSP or GIMP, get the original image, crop it as you like, and add the words in yourself. She used a pixel font for the first one, though technically I guess you could use any font you liked. It'd look fine as long as you had the proper aliasing.

[conuly]

Even if I did, I'm not sure I'd know how.

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Well, PSP and PS both have free trial versions online. GIMP is free for download. I've never used it, but I've heard that it's comparable to PS and PSP in terms of tools and options. It is very easy to find tutorials for both PSP and PS, less so for GIMP. To crop, you just pretty much click the crop tool on the toolbar and then click and drag on the image 'til you get what you want cropped. If you're not cropping straight to 100by100 you want to crop in a perfect square so that it's even when you resize it. And then you click the text took, click on the image, type what you want, and then you're done!

Of course, that's all very basic. If you actually did have any of the programs, I'm sure ty, xiggy or myself could walk you through it, or you could find an easy tutorial. It is a bit of effort when you can just make other people do it for you, though! I only learned to make icons for myself because I do not have as many technologically savvy friends as you do.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I got Paint Shop Pro in a copy of Scanners for Dummies. It's useless to me. The help files are jargon. I don't understand them at all. Apparently PSP is a tool for people who do professional photo editing (according to the book) so that's why the help files are gibberish.

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

Or, alternatively, one can use fonts designed for use at certain pixel sizes, such as 04B (http://www.dsg4.com/04/extra/bitmap/index.html) and Unibody (http://www.underware.nl/site2/index.php3?id1=unibody&id2=overview)...

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Of course. I overuse some of them, myself. They're just so cute. ^_^

But (as I'm sure you know) pixel fonts should not be antialiased.

[codeman38.livejournal.com]