Harry Potter Icon

This tutorial walks you through making your own Harry Potter icons sized for Live Journal avatars.

I'm doing these in Adobe's PhotoDeluxe, the poor man's PhotoShop, but any reasonable image package will do the same thing. You just need the ability to crop, layer, make opaque and add text.

Pick a Mood or Persona

Let's say for the sake of this demonstration, that you've always identified with Harry Potter's supersmart friend Hermione. You particularly identify with her younger, less pulled-together look. Say, the Hermione you see below.

Use the crop tool to select an area that is roughly square, and crop away the rest of the image. Center little Hermie's face and crop the rest of the image. Zoom in close because you've only got 100x100 pixels to work with so if you want to be able to recognize your avatar, you have to be close to them.

Now resize your image. Whichever is the larger dimension, width or height, make that one 100 pixels. Make sure 'constrain proportions' is selected when you resize and the other dimension will be resized in proportion to the one you change. And voila, a tiny, Live-Journal sized pic of Hermione.

Your First Harry Potter Icon

Here's Hermione, ready to be uploaded to your Live Journal User Pics and used for your Harry Potter posts. Isn't she cute?

Crop Creatively

Don't feel like everything in your Harry Potter icon has to be centered and full-face. Perhaps just an eye or a nose will convey the appropriate mood.

Add Text As Appropriate

Use text tool to add text if needed. This is Viner Hand font.