Tutorial #2
blocking/window icon

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There were some request to know how I made this icon. And I thought I would make a tutorial how to make it. Just so you know, I'm terrible with explaining things.
Firstly we need two pictures. It works better if one is a close up and one is far away. I choose to take this screencap and this one for this tutorial.



1. Open PS and add both the images in it. Also make a new Transparent file that is 100x100px.

2. Use the Crop Tool and make the images to 100x50. So they will look like this:



Note: Here you can also color them in any coloring you want. I will just play around with some coloring here (and also later on if needed).

3. When you done with the coloring on them you have to merge them.

Layer > Merge Visible

4. Now we will start using the Transparent icon. Take one of the images and drag it over to the transparent icon. Do the same thing with the other image.

And it will look like this.



5. Next step, you go back to the images and take the close up and drag it over to the icon we working on. And place it over the far away image.

So it will look like this:



Do the same thing with the far away images and put it above the close up that we worked with in #4.
And it should look like this. They have just switch places then the previous images layers on the icon.



6. So now we have all the images we need on the icon. So now go to this place in PS:



And mark the two top ones like I have done on the screencap above. And then you click:

Ctrl + T

It will show up a white square around the icon like this:



Hold down Shift and click on one of the small squares at one of the edges and drag it towards the middle of the icon to make them smaller (you have to stop when you think it looks good).

It will look like this for my icon:



7. Now you go back to this.



We will now change their position here a little. Take the small Far Away (it's Layer 5 here) and put it above Layer 2. So it will look like this instead:



8. The reason we did this, was because we will now make Layer 2 and Layer 5 into a brownish tone. (You can take black&white here too)
For this icon I made it black&white first. And then I took a red/brown tone (#2e1715) and put it to screen 80% opacity.

For this icon it made it little flat so I duplicated the small far away and put it to screen 50% opacity. It looks like this now:



Note: There is other ways to make it brownish. But it was this way I used for the tutorial.

9. Now I take another look on the coloring if it need some work on it. I felt it needed some more coloring and some light to it and I just took a Hue/Saturation and set the Saturation to +13-15.

For more light I took Curves and I just drag it up really small like this:



10. Merge all the layers. And then duplicate the image and sharpen it. If you think it's get to much sharpen you can take down the opacity for it. And then merge it again.

11. This is optional, but if you want to add something you can do that. I usually use a texture like this one for my icons in a low opacity.


The Result:
Without texture and with texture:



Some more examples: