Post 1 of 2 today: Icons for my favorite Watcher

[feliciacraft.livejournal.com]

Hello everyone! Today's my posting day. Yay! Thanks to the mods for keeping the tea party going at Summer of Giles! And thanks for everyone for making this such a blast!

This time around I'm thinking in colors instead of words, so instead of fanfic, I'm pleased to offer a set of Gilesy icons. This is my very first time creating icons for LJ (I've just created a PhotoBucket for this purpose and read about uploading icons), so please let me know if anything's amiss. Also, I'd love to get honest feedback, including anonymously, if that'd make you feel more comfortable.

All icons are snaggable; please credit because that would just make my day to know someone out there is using an icon I created! :)


1-4.


5-8.


9-12.


Extras:
10-variant              A pair of Buffy icons cut from a larger piece


6-variant                4-variant


1-variant                12-variant

Comments

[dancingdragon3.livejournal.com]

Hey, these are great! I can't believe it's your first batch. I love that you included some of him on the guitar and with Jenny :sniff sniff: 3 and 12 are my faves, both 10s, variant number one.

I was thinking the same thing about 1, 4, and 9, but didn't know how to put it into words, as Double Dutchess did. I'm a photoshop rookie, too. So I'm glad to know that using high-res images might be an issue for me, too, as images often look very different for me when I shrink them down. Also, TBO, I have no idea how you did that line and color variant effect on 3, lol.

[feliciacraft.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I fell out of practice, though I'd been trained in Photoshop more than a decade ago. There's more to icon creation than photo editing, though, as I found out in the process of making these. Loads of fun, though! :P

There are multiple ways of changing the color of an image or part of an image. You can adjust the color temperature of an image by dragging along the color slide bar ("Color Correction"), or add a layer with a color gradient and instead of using "Normal" on how layers combine, use something like "Screen" which overlaps the two images together. Or just make the color layer the top layer and adjust its transparency. The effects are different in each and fun to play around. :)

When in doubt, I usually duplicate the layer and go wild with the copy, apply all kinds of effects, slice it and put the pieces back, etc., knowing that I could always go back to the original image should an experiment fail. :P It's pretty neat to try different things.