Channel Icon Creation Guides

[alcaholjunkie]

This guide will be show the basics of making Channel icons for both neutrino (raw) and enigma (png).

Things that you will need for this guide:

• PSP7 / Paint Shop Pro 7 (You need to find this yourself)
• Neutrino Raw icons psp pallete
• RawIconEditor

Note: You can probly use other image editing apps by using the pallette information that I will provide in part 1 of this guide.

Beginners Guide

I will be using the BBC NEWS icon in this beginners guide for it's simplicity. More complex icons will be covered in additions to this guide.
Original Image:

Part 1 About the raw image format.

The raw image format consists of 16 colours, 1 of which is set to be transparent.
This means that you have only 15 colours to work with when creating a channel icon!

The colours themself are:

1. 000000
2. A00000
3. 007800
4. FFC800
5. 000078
6. C800C8
7. 00C8C8
8. 969696
9. C8C8C8
10. FF6464
11. 32FF32
12. FFFF00
13. 5050FF
14. FF96FF
15. 96FFC8
16. FFFFFF

A 100 x 60 raw image will be 2.93KB in size. The format doesn't seem to have any compression of any sort but with so few colours it doesn't get too big.


Part 2 Preparing the channel icon.

You can locate most channel icons over at Lyngsat Logo. (Their US section has some icons not listed in the UK section)
I also found some foreign channel icons over at pakenjoy. You will have to find others either via google or the channel's website.

Once you have found the icon you want to make into a raw channel icon, just copy and paste it into PSP.
(CTRL + V in PSP to paste as a new image)



Now we have the icon in PSP, but it's the wrong size! Press SHIFT + S to bring up the resize dialogue.
Usually you would have to consider a few things about the icon, like where all the "whitespace" is located.
In this icon there is ample space above and below the main content so resize it to 100 pixels wide and have it keep the aspect ratio.


This icon is now the right width, but needs some of the "whitespace" removed.
Click on the Image menu at the top and select Canvas Size..., then set new width and height to 100 and 60 respectively.



The image is the right size now, but since this image has a coloured background it is best to draw a 1 pixel wide border around the edge.


Highlight the image and then copy & paste as a new image. (one for raw and one for png)
You can do this by pressing CTRL + A to select the whole image, CTRL + C to copy it and then CTRL + V to paste it as new iamge.



Part 3 Converting prepared icon for the raw image format.

Select one of the images for the raw image format, then press SHIFT + O to open the Load Pallete dialogue and select the neutrino.pal file.


The image should now be using colours from the neutrino raw pallate.
Now select the image (CTRL+A) and copy it (CTRL+C),


Load up RawIconEditor, then click on the Datei menu, and select Neu.


Enter in the values 100 and 60 as shown, then click on Übernehmen.


You may want to zoom into the workspace as shown here.


Now click on the Bearbeiten menu, and select Einfügen.



Click on the secondary colour below the pallete, then click on a colour that is not used in this icon.
This will set the transparency to a colour that is not being used so will not look odd in neutrino.


Now click on the Datei menu, and select Speicern unter.


Save the file with the name of the channel, matching what it is on the dbox, including any captitol letters and spaces.


That's be the neutrino raw channel icon completed. Just need to copy it onto the dbox.


Part 4 Converting prepared icon for the png image format.

Now back into PSP. You can close the image that was meant for the raw icon if you want to as we will be working on the image meant for png format.


Press CTRL + SHIFT + 3 to open the Decrease Color Depth - 256 Colors dialogue.
The options should be ok to be left as they are.


Press F12 to bring up the save as dialogue, and save it in png format, and again with the same name as shown on the dbox.



Conclusion

You should now be able to at least create basic channel icons for both neutrino and enigma. ^_^

Further additions to this guide thread will include more advanced and detailed icons.

[alcaholjunkie]

In addition to the basic guide, the following are instructions on optimizing png files.

Part 4b Optimizing the png image. (optional)

You will need PngOptimizer for this!

Load up PngOptimizer, then simply drag and drop the png file into it.
By default this will rename the old png file something like _BBC NEWS.png and have the optimized file as BBC NEWS.png.



Part 4c Optimizing the png image further. (optional and more advanced)

You will need OptiPNG for this!

Press WINDOWS KEY + R to bring up the run dialogue, and enter in cmd.


Now you need to navigate in command line to the location of the png images.
The command cd\ will take you to C:\, then if you have your images in a folder called icons on your C drive, just do cd icons.
Once in the same direcotry as the png images and optipng.exe, you can do the following command: optipng -nc -o7 "BBC NEWS.png"


Depending on the image, PngOptimiser may of optimized it enough for optipng to say it is already optimized, but sometimes it can optimize it even further to make it smaller in size.

[alcaholjunkie]

Moderate/Advanced Mini-Guides

These will also be raw icons only from here on since all you need to know about saving as png is covered in the beginners guide.
All work on the images are done outside of RawIconEditor, getting the image into RawIconEditor is covered in the beginners guide.
Although this may cover some different image resizing methods, they don't differ much from the first one shown.

Mini-Guide 1 Simple Shaded Icon

I will be using the HISTORY icon in this mini-guide for it's shading.
Original Image:

This particular icon does not have much "whitespace" above and blow the main content, so should be resized by height. (SHIFT + S)


Then increase the width of the image upto 100 pixel by using the Canvas Size dialogue.
Make sure that your secondary colour is the same as the background of the icon!


Now when changing the pallet to the neutrino raw pallet (using SHIFT + O), select Error diffusion dithering.


The error diffusion deithering will make the icon have some sort of depth using hte few colours available.

• With Error Diffusion Dithering
• Without Error Diffusion Dithering

Mini-Guide 2 Colour Match & Dithering Mixup

Here's a little trick I picked up while messing about with the two options from the Load Pallete dialogue.
I will be using the Discovery Knowledge icon in this mini-guide for it's mixture of simplicity and shading.
Original Image:

Paste two copies of the icon into PSP and resize them and the canvases to 100 x 60 pixels.


Load the neutrino pallet on both of them, one using the Error diffusion dithering, and one without.


Using the selection tool, select around the globe of the dithered image, and then copy (CTRL + C).
Then in the Colour Matched image, paste as a new selection (CTRL + E) and move it over the globe that is already there.



Mini-Guide 3 Icon Clean-up

The icon made in Mini-Guide 2 can be cleaned up a little. As you can see, there are green and blue within the main text of the icon.
I find that they usually end up in black, or close to black text.


You can simply use the colour replace tool to correct this.
Just select black as the primary colour, and green then blue for the secondary colour.
secondary colour is the one that is to be replaced within the image



Mini-Guide 4 Icon Clean-up Continued

I will be using the More 4 icon in this mini-guide for it's small text.
Original Image:

After loading up the neutrino pallete, the icon looks a bit of a mess as you can see here.


First thing to do is replace the dark green with the lighter green. The text isn't too clear though.


Now carefully draw in the missing parts of the letters.



Conclusion

Hopefully you should be able to make some half-decent images afer reading through these guides. (probly better than some of mine, lol)

If I can think of anything to add then I'll ammend these posts. ^_^