Can you make an icon from a photo? A case of Draw-it-Yourself.

Can you turn a photo into an icon?

You don't have to play with digital pictures for long to realise that reducing them makes them sharper.

...Down to a certain point.

When you get to the scale of an icon-sized image in black and white, you enter the nano-world of graphics. Different rules apply!

sunflower phone image sunflower black and white

Here is an original digital camera image (background removed) converted to black and white for a tiny two-colour graphic.

Here it is reduced to 25% [27 x 30 pixels]

pixellated reduced image

This is the icon-sized image re-enlarged to show you what is now missing

The picture has started to fall apart at a this very small size.

You just do not have enough pixels to make anything more than a crude mosaic. Without colour, the amount of information you can show is even more drastically reduced.

A stem might make that doughnut look more like a flower - but no stem was visible in the original.

The black square doesn't help. A tiny graphic needs a good outline to stand out. And who wants a gloomy sunflower?

How about turning the background white...?

You do at least have one advantage when working in black and white. You don't have to worry about transparency. Boxes around images disappear when they are white-on-white.

Shapes that are dark at the outer edge work best. Silhouettes are effective, especially for icons. But here, the sunflower centre has to stay black - and there's no room for outlines.

tiny sunflower image edge detected icon sized flower

Here is our original sunflower again. This time the black and white version is 'Edge Detected' in Photoshop.

icon sized image re-enlarged

Here is the resulting icon sized graphic, re-enlarged.

Not much left, is there?

It really is a case of Draw-it-Yourself at this size!

If you are still determined to make an icon or other size-challenged graphic from a photo, crop to the smallest possible part of it. Remove the background, then reduce the image size as much as you can before you convert to black-and-white. Photoshop Elements Save for Web will do the colour reduction.

You will probably still have to tidy the image up. In fact you will probably end up having to redraw it anyway...

It's much easier to draw the whole thing from the start! At this tiny size, it really is not difficult.

Can you make an iconfrom a photo?

Can you turn a photo into an icon?

It really is a case of Draw-it-Yourself at this size!

Can you make an icon
from a photo?