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Add Link Data icon to cartImage sizes: 512x512, 256x256, 64x64, 48x48, 32x32, 24x24, 20x20, 16x16
File formats: BMP, GIF, PNG, ICO
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Creating Images with Aqua Effect
Designing a brand-new image having the renowned "aqua" effect is easier than you think – if you use proper tools. You can make an image from scratch by only using a free, small and lightweight icon editor.Designing a fresh new image featuring the familiar "aqua" effect is easier than you think – if you have proper tools. To create an image from scratch, a professional, small and simple icon editor such as IconLover 5 (aha-soft.com) is all you really need.
For an instance, 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 certain color. Select the color you want from the Color properties menu. By the way, you can always save a color by adding it to Custom Colors; this comes really 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 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 make 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 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 painted a circle!
To add volume and dimension to the flat circle, we’ll need to add some special effects. There are tons 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 make 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 current positions 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 plenty of values available to tweak, allowing you to create 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 more like a button 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 use the defaults, or adjust the settings around to get a flat button, a lens, or a ball. The look depends on the size of the shadow, its distance from the subject, and the angle at which it falls to the ground.
To add the ‘plus’ sign into the icon, click on the Text tool icon in the left Tools menu or press "T" to invoke the text properties window. Make sure the "Image transparency" box is ticked. This box means that your text will not be transparent, only the area around it will be. Changing 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 embedded into the ball.
Voila! You’ve just drawn a crystal ball that appears to be in the famous Aqua style! All you needed was a professional icon editor, IconLover 5, a few clicks and a couple of minutes of your time. Easy!
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