I want to share the tutorial how to making an icon with Adobe CS3 (CS4) style. Here, I use Adobe Photoshop CS. But I think you can use older version (Adobe Photoshop 7.0), and absolutely no problem with newer version (CS2 and up).

Pertama, persiapkan ruang kerja. Buat dokumen Photoshop baru berukuran persegi, yakni dengan tinggi dan lebar yang sama. Tapi Anda juga bebas bereksperimen dengan dokumen yang tidak persegi. Saya membuat dengan ukuran 400 x 400 piksel.

Tambahkan sebuah layer baru di atas layer background. Beri nama “Base”.

Ubah warna foreground menjadi #0066CC. Saya memilih warna biru karena ikon Photoshop CS3 berwarna biru. Isi layer “Base” tersebut menggunakan paint bucket tool. Sehingga Anda akan mendapatkan sebuah layer berwarna biru polos.

Tambahkan layer baru di atas layer “Base”, beri nama “Shade”. Ubah warna foreground menjadi putih (#FFFFFF), dan warna background menjadi hitam (#000000). Pilih gradient tool, dan pilih mode “radial gradient” dengan tema warna gradient “Foreground to Background”.

Buat gradient di layer “Shade” dari kiri-atas ke kanan-bawah.

Change layer blending of “Shade” layer to “multiply”. Then, set the layer opacity and layer fill to 80%. You can customize this percentage as you like.

Next step is placing the text. Use horizontal text tool to type. I type “Cs”, as “Creative Suite”. I use 250 pt regular Myriad Pro font.

You can use the guide line and the ruler to center the text.

Set your foreground colour to #CCCCFF and background colour to white (#FFFFFF). Or, alternatively you can use #000000/#666666 to make black font as CS4 style instead of older CS3 white font.

Right-click text layer on “Layers” window, and select “Blending Options…”

Tick the “Gradient Overlay”. Then choose “Foreground to Background” gradient. Click “OK”.

And you have done the icon!

Additional step:

You can add the shiny glossy Web 2.0 effect to the icon. Add a new layer, name it “Shine”. You need to make a new gradient preset. With the gradient editor, create 3 opacity stops: 0% at 0% location, 50% at 1% location and 0% at 100% location; and 2 colour stops with white color at 0% and 100% location. Name it “Gloss Shine”, or whatever you like.

With gradient tool, create a new gradient with “Gloss Shine” preset on “Shine” layer, from the centre to left-top corner. Make it about 30 degrees counter clockwise from 12-o-clock.

And it shines…

If you like, you can adjust the “Shine” layer blending options. Set as “Screen” with 50% opacity and 50% fill, as mine, for a guide.

Additional trick to change the colour:

Actually, you can change the colour with just re-filling the “Base” layer with another colour using paint bucket tool. But, you still have to re-adjust the gradient overlay of the text. Fortunately, you can use my trick: add an adjustment layer (Hue Saturation) above the “Base” and text layer.

Then, you can adjust the “Hue” easily as you like to get another colours.

— Adham Somantrie