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Icon sizes: 256x256, 128x128, 64x64, 60x60, 48x48, 40x40, 32x32, 30x30, 26x26, 24x24, 20x20, 16x16, 512x512 File formats: ICO, GIF, PNG, BMP ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Creating Images with Aqua EffectDesigning a fresh new icon featuring the famous "aqua" effect is easier than you think – if you have proper tools. You can create an icon from scratch by only using a free, small and easy icon editor.Creating a fresh new image featuring the renowned "aqua" effect is easier than you think – if you use proper tools. To create an icon from scratch, a professional, small and simple icon editor such as IconLover 5 (aha-soft.com) is all you really need. For example, let us draw an aqua-style icon to represent "Add", a glass ball with a "plus" sign in it. First, you’ll need to draw a circle of a chosen color. Select the color from the Color properties menu. Just so you know, you can always memorize a color by adding it to Custom Colors; this comes very handy if you need to draw a matching set of icons. Using the Transparency bar or by using one of the Transparency presets, set your new icon’s opacity. For this tutorial, the ball will be fully opaque. Similarly, you can specify background color; for simplicity’s sake, we’ll keep the background transparent for now. To draw a circle of your chosen color, select the Filled Ellipse tool by clicking the Filled Ellipse icon in the Tools menu, which is on the left of the drawing area. Holding your left mouse button down, move the mouse cursor within the drawing area to create an ellipse. The ellipse changes its size as you move the mouse. To create a perfectly round circle, hold Shift while drawing. That’s it, you have just created a circle! To add volume and dimension to the flat circle, we’ll need to add some special effects. There are many of those built into IconLover! You can add shadows, gradients, transparency channels, and of course, the renowned ‘glass reflection’ look employed by the aqua effect. To draw an icon matching Apple’s Aqua style, you’ll need to draw a reflection and a shadow to the circle. This can be managed quite easily altogether by simply selecting Aqua from the Effects menu. Just keep all sliders at their defaults for now, and you’ll get a beautiful shiny sphere as a result. Now let’s have some fun and make your icon truly unique. Go back to that Aqua dialog and have a carefull look at the settings. There are plenty of properties available to tweak, allowing you to draw something never seen before. Go ahead and move the sliders to see how your icon can look! As a final touch, let’s add some volume to your new icon. While glowing and shiny, it still looks like a button rather than a crystal ball. Let’s fix that by throwing a drop-down shadow! To apply a shadow effect to your icon, click "Drop shadow" from the Effects menu. You can use the defaults, or move the settings around to get a flat button, a lens, or a ball. The effect depends on the size of the shadow, its distance from the subject, and the angle at which it falls to the surface. To embed the ‘plus’ sign into the image, click on the Text tool icon in the left Tools menu or press "T" to open the text properties window. Make sure the "Image transparency" box is ticked. This means that your text will not be transparent, only the area around it will be. Tweaking the "Use semi-transparency" setting assigns your text the same level of transparency your primary color has. Type "+", and you’ll get the ‘plus’ sign embedded into the ball. Voila! You’ve just designed a crystal ball that matches the famous Aqua style! All you needed was a professional icon editor, IconLover 5, a few mouse clicks and a couple of minutes of your time. Easy! ![]()
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