quick icon guide

CAPS & CROPPING

You'll want to get the highest quality caps you can get. There's loads of resources out there, but some of my faves are:

• HOMEOFTHENUTTY
• SCREENCAPPED DOT NET
• THETVSHOWS
• KISSTHEMGOODBYE

If you're not keen on the caps above, or can't fine the caps you need, you can make your own! I use VLC to make mine. I use MULLVAD as my VPN, and I use 1337x if I need a source. Additionally if it's a specific actor, sometimes if you google their name + fansite you'll come across galleries entirely dedicated to their work which is always a) a gift, and b) reduces cap sorting time by half.

I have psds of varying colouring etc which are pre-sized to 100x100 (more on those adjustments below). This helps me keep icons as uniform as possible when I'm doing sets. Obviously this may change on the colour grading of the show or certain scenes, so one PSD may not always work for every cap etc.

I usually open a cap in Photoshop and crop using a 1x1 ratio square (click imgs to enlarge!):

SIZING

I'll then resize in increments to see which crop or sizing looks best. This is usually up to personal taste. Below is a 300x300 resize vs a 200x200 resize of the original cropped cap.

SMART SHARPEN

Next I smart sharpen! This allows me to control how much sharpening is happening, and reduce the noise/grain a little.

These are the settings I used for this set, but I usually adjust and play around depending on the quality of the caps I'm using. You'll notice my icons are zoomed in while I'm making adjustments - This is just so I can do precise moving etc, and I usually zoom and out while I'm editing to make sure it still looks good.

ADJUSTMENTS

Your adjustments will help you preserve and highlight details, and these are, again, down to personal taste. These are some of the adjustments I used for this particular set for Constantine:

I also use gradients and light layers to highlight/shadow certain aspects of the icon. Here's an example of those (set to soft light):

I'll usually adjust these as I go, reducing and raising the opacity or just hiding them if I feel like I don't need a certain adjustment. Some of my fave adjustment layer tricks are:

• Selective Colour - You can reduce overwhelming tones with this, but it can also provide really good contrast if you select black, scroll down to the 'black' slider and mess around with it.

  

• Curves - For brightening!
• Colour Balance - for colour adjustments. I mostly adjust midtones rather than highlights and shadows.
• Vibrance / Hue & Saturation - I'll usually crack these all the way up and then adjust the opacity as needed.

Hopefully this helps!