love_sacrificed | Ask a Maker

I've been considering doing a post like this for a while, but am not sure if it's really going to garner much interest. Well, unlike all the other times, I thought of it while actually sitting in front of my computer and decided to go ahead with it...

Anyway, years ago (while I was still on livejournal), I participated in an icon challenge that required winners (and invited mod's choice) to write a tutorial for the winning icon and I really enjoyed doing that. I've been missing doing that and have thought about writing tutorials again. I just can't decide for what icon I should do it. I've started some general ones, but feel kind of direction less with them. So, I figured I'd just open up the choice to other people and let them request tutorials for icons - provided that I still have the .psd file for it.

TL;DR: If you'd like to know how I made an icon, feel free to request a tutorial here! :)

Notes about tutorials:
• I primarily use Photoshop CS5 to make icons and therefore tutorials will be based on that tool.
• I tend to have psd for most of my icons, but I don't feel comfortable promising that this is true for 100% of the icons I made.
• Not all steps might have exact values (especially with blurring / sharpening).
• All tutorials will be written instructions.

How to request a tutorial:
• Link or embed the icon you want a tutorial for
• Alternatively, if used as a userpic, feel free to use it as the icon for the comment.
• If you want a more generic tutorial (e.g. how I handle dark icons or tips for cropping), you're welcome to do that as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Question! Can you get Photoshop CS5 for free or cheap somewhere? So tired of my corel photoshop and not being able to do much.

Also I'll search your icons to see for any tutorials that would be interesting to ask about. :) How many can we request?

I have no idea if any Photoshop version is available for free or cheap somewhere. I got mine about 10 years or so ago while I was still a student and able to get a discount that way (and unless my memory gets it wrong, I think it reduced it from ~1200€ to ~200€). I remember trying GIMP around that time since it's free, but I'd already gotten way too used to Photoshop (due to using it in a class for university) and caved. It probably helped that I also suggested it to family members as a present for me (at the reduced price).

I had used Photoshop 7 prior to getting CS5 and while there (obviously) were some newer features in CS5, there were a lot of similarities. So, tutorials should be able to translate to other versions.

As for requesting tutorials - I haven't really considered limiting how many get requested, but the more you request, the longer I'll need to get to every one (assuming I hadn't gotten lazy with keeping track of what I did for any of them)