How to Make a Simple Icon in Photoshop

I’m going to show you how to cut yourself a simple icon base in Photoshop.

I’ve noticed a lot of people tend to just take an image, whatever size, and simply resize it to 100 x 100. Now if you’ve ever done that, you’ve probably noticed that it comes out horrible looking and pixilated. So I’m going to show you how I do my icons.

Step One:

Open your image in Photoshop. I’m going to use this image of Morgana from the television show Merlin.

Step Two:

On the toolbar, choose the square selection tool and change your settings so they reselmble these:

Step Three:

Use the selection tool to select the part of the image you'd like to use as your icon. Hold Ctrl + c - this will copy the select part of the image.

Step Four:

Go to File >> New.

Step Five:

Since you've copied the selected image, the suggested size of your new document should be set to the size of your selection - so just click OK.

Step Six:

Go to Image >>Image Size.

Step Seven:

Set your width to 100 pixels and your height to 100 pixels and then click OK.

Step Seven:

That's it! Now that you're done, be sure to save your image before exiting the program.

If you had any problems understanding anything just let me know!

My new icon: