Icon design is an essential element in any designer’s tool chest. No matter how simple or how complex your design is, a nice looking icon will almost always help to spruce things up. In this Photoshop tutorial we will demonstrate some easy steps to help you to produce your own shiny Psdtuts+ icon in Photoshop. These steps can be easily modified to produce a family of icons for your website.

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Welcome to the fifth and last tutorial in the “Creating a Set of Digital Painting Icons” series. We will end with an icon that depicts both a tool and a typical application of digital painting: a large display with a finished matte painting.

The screen will be drawn in a few easy steps using familiar Photoshop tools. We will then employ techniques and workflows utilized by professional matte painters to create a finished cityscape. Far from being an exercise on matte painting, this tutorial nonetheless gives us a peek into this fascinating branch of digital arts.

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This tutorial is about creating the Apple Magic Mouse in Photoshop, though you could use these techniques to create other mouse icon design styles as well. The new design of this mouse just looks amazing. Creating it and using it as an icon makes it all that more fun and interesting. The glossy look and the simplicity, transforms this mouse into a really neat looking icon. This tutorial will challenge intermediate level Photoshop user, so let’s get started!

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For this forth installment of the “Creating a Set of Digital Painting Icons” series we will create a pen tablet from scratch, specifically the Wacom 12″ Cintiq tablet. This model combines touch and pressure sensitivity, which allows users to draw directly on the screen. These capabilities make it a favorite for illustrators. Let’s get to work.

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In this tutorial, you’ll go through easy steps for creating a nice envelope icon. There’s a light use of the Pen Tool in the tutorial, but most of it uses Selection Tools to create this icon. The stamp is also explained in a simple manner. I am sure you’ll get familiar with some useful techniques as you go through!

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Welcome to the third tutorial in the “Creating a Set of Digital Painting Icons” series. In this installment we will create a paint brush icon, complete with wooden palette and paint dollops. We will employ textures, layer styles and a good sense of lighting to create a fun looking icon.

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Welcome to the second tutorial in the “Creating a Set of Digital Painting Icons” series. This time we’ll create a digital SLR camera, a tool digital artists often use to take pictures to create textures or for reference. We will construct a rather simple camera, but we’ll make it interesting through judicious use of brush strokes and shadows. Let’s get to it!

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This is the first tutorial in a series called “Creating a Set of Digital Painting Icons.” We will design five icons that depict common tools associated with digital painting: a sketchbook with pencil, a camera for taking reference pictures, a paintbrush, a pen tablet and a large screen with a complete matte painting displayed on it. Let’s get started with the sketchbook icon!

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In this tutorial, you’ll learn how a magician’s hat can be designed in Photoshop. The tutorial involves a simple use of the Pen Tool and other Shape Tools. It shows a distinct use of different blending modes and focuses on other lighting techniques. Shadows are also explained in the tutorial and we’ll reveal some great beginner techniques. Let’s get started!

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Our goal for this tutorial is to draw a realistic leather briefcase entirely from scratch. We’ll use Photoshop’s amazing layer styles and incredible brush engine to create textured leather, convincing stitches and gold-plated locks. Let’s get started!

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