Icon from photograph - Tutorial

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Icon from photograph - Tutorial

Learn how to make an icon from a photograph in RealWorld Icon Editor. This video explains how to remove background from a picture and how to crop it before converting it to icon.

More tips about making background transparent.

Narration transcript

How to make an icon from a photograph.

Start by opening a photo, for example by dragging and dropping it on the application window.

Switch to Transformation tool and select a region of interest - a little dog in my case.
Right click and select "Crop to selection" in context menu.

Switch to Pencil tool and select a transparent color (the 4 gray squares).

Click on the image and zoom in with mouse wheel. You can move the image by dragging with the mouse wheel or by moving the scrollbars.

Draw with the pencil around the object of interest. You do not need to be extra accurate, we will fix the edges later, but do not leave any gaps. That is important! The line needs to be continuous, it is OK if it overlaps.

I do want the rear half of the dog on my icon, so watch me cutting that half off.

Switch to Flood fill tool. Then set the matching mode to 'Alpha'. Finally, click outside the outlined region on the image.

Switch to Brush tool and start repairing the edges. Again, accuracy is not that important if the resolution of your photograph is high enough. Icons are small and the imperfections will not be visible.

I intentionally picked a very furry animal to show you that a good icon can be obtained form almost any photo.

Click on Remove empty border and then OK.

Click on Create icon from image and then OK again.

Our icon is ready, as you can see, all the pictures look very good and there are no traces of grass or other background - just the good dog. Save it and you are done.

Thanks for watching.

Recent comments

- show all comments
user icon Anonymous on December 18th 2020

WoW

user icon Anonymous on February 10th 2021

:-D :-) :-o 8-)

i like
it

user icon Anonymous on May 26th 2021

i love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-D :-D :-D :-D

user icon Anonymous on September 8th 2021

i want too

user icon Anonymous on September 22nd 2021

i want to do that!

user icon Anonymous on October 22nd 2021

your my daddy

kiss me btw im a boy?goat?fish

i want a glizzy cursor please

user icon <3 registered user on May 23rd 2022

:3

user icon Anonymous on February 13th 2023

k ig that helped

user icon Anonymous on November 28th 2023

:-D :-D :-D here is a link of a photo of you want to use it

sorry here it is

never mind it not gonna work my cuputer is not working

user icon Anonymous on June 13th

sounds sort of cool i should try it out :-)

sounds sort of cool i should try it out :-)

8-)

user icon Anonymous
What about ICL files?
Vista & Win 7 icons