How to Make the Outline of an Icon in Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop offers a variety of tools to use to create graphics, from large-scale projects to tiny images for use as icons. For those smallest projects, Photoshop also offers ways to practice graphic design skills such as outlining. On the Photoshop screen, even a small-pixeled design such as an icon can fill up the screen, with Photoshop's tools at the ready for tracing and copying. Make an outline of an icon in Photoshop, and put your images in a whole new light.

Instructions

1. Open Photoshop. Click the "File" menu and select "Open," then navigate to the icon image file. Double-click its file name.

2. Pull down the "View" menu and click "Fit on Screen," to enlarge the icon so you'll be able to outline it.

3. Click the "New Layer" icon, the small folded-corner note, at the bottom of the "Layers" palette on the bottom-right corner of the screen. A new Layer 1 is added to the palette but the image remains the same.

4. Double-click the "Color Picker," the higher of the two overlapping colored squares at the bottom of the "Tools" pane on the left side of the screen. Choose a color for the outline and click "OK."

5. Click the "Pencil" tool in the middle of the "Tools" pane. If you do not see the "Pencil," right-click an icon of a paintbrush and click "Pencil Tool" from the fly-out menu.

6. Pull down the pencil's sizer menu, which is not labeled, but is the second option from the left on the toolbar near the top of the screen. Slide the sizer to "1."

7. Position the pencil on one of the edges of the icon. Press and hold down the left mouse button. Drag the cursor around the icon until it is completely outlined.

8. Right-click the Background layer, which holds the original icon, in the "Layers" palette. Select "Delete Layer" and click "Yes" at the warning window. You're left with just the icon outline.

9. Click the "File" menu and select "Save As." Type a name for the icon outline, select "GIF" from the "Format" menu, and click "Save."

References

• University of Washington: Photoshop Painting