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 Emails Icon |
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Add Emails icon to cartImage sizes: 512x512, 256x256, 64x64, 48x48, 32x32, 24x24, 20x20, 16x16
File formats: BMP, GIF, PNG, ICO
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Creating Icons with Aqua Effect
Drawing a brand-new icon featuring the familiar "aqua" effect is easier than you think – if you have proper tools. You can design an image from scratch by only using a free, small and easy icon editor.Designing a brand-new icon having the renowned "aqua" effect is easier than you think – if you have proper tools. To create an image from scratch, a professional, small and easy icon editor such as IconLover 5 (aha-soft.com) is all you really need.
For example, let us make an aqua-style icon for "Add", a glass ball with a "plus" sign inside. To start, you’ll need to draw a circle of a certain color. Pick the color you want from the Color properties menu. By the way, 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 image’s transparency. For this tutorial, the ball has to 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 selected 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 the left mouse button down, move the mouse cursor within the drawing area to create an ellipse. The ellipse changes its size and shape as you move the mouse. To create a perfectly round circle, hold Shift while drawing. That’s it, you have just drawn a circle!
In order for our flat circle to start looking like a crystal ball, we’ll need to add some special effects. There are many of those built into IconLover! You can add shadows, gradients, transparency masks, and of course, the famous ‘glass reflection’ look employed by the aqua effect.
To draw an icon matching Apple’s Aqua style, you’ll need to add a reflection and a shadow to the circle. This can be done quite easily altogether by simply selecting Aqua from the Effects menu. Keep all sliders and values at their defaults for now, and you’ll get a beautiful shiny sphere as a result.
Now let’s add an artist’s touch and make your icon truly unique. Go back to that Aqua dialog and have a look at the properties. There are multiple properties available to tweak, allowing you to create something never seen before. Go ahead and tweak the sliders to see how your icon can look!
As a final touch, let’s add some dimension to your newly created icon. While glowing and shiny, it still looks more like a lens rather than a crystal ball. Let’s fix that by throwing a drop-down shadow! To add a shadow effect to your icon, click "Drop shadow" from the Effects menu. You can stick to defaults, or adjust the settings around to get a flat button, a lens, or a ball. It all depends on the size of the shadow, its distance from the subject, and the angle at which it falls to the surface.
To add the ‘plus’ sign into the icon, 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 checked. This box means that your text will not be transparent, only the area around it will be. Adjusting the "Use semi-transparency" setting gets your text the same level of transparency your primary color has. Type "+", and you’ll get the ‘plus’ sign inserted into the ball.
That’s it! You’ve just drawn a crystal ball that matches the famous Aqua style! All you needed was a professional icon editor, IconLover 5, a few clicks and a few minutes of your time. Easy!
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