Icon and Avatar Cropping Tips

The crop tool allows you to select an area of an image and discard everything else outside this area. When making icon, some people like to crop first then proceed to do the coloring from there. If you ask me, I do cropping in the end. Why? well, because I can do the coloring on one image and just crop them differently to get 4 to 5 icons...maybe more. So now, the question is...what is a good cropping? The answer to that is very subjective. But whatever you do, just try to be creative. Below are a few examples of my favorite cropping techniques:



1. Most part of the face is cropped out..this might be too extreme for some people but then again, there's no limit to creativity, right? Careful though..not to be too extreme until it's impossible to identify who the person is.


2. Visible shoulder with cut-out upper-head with a fair amount of background to the left or right.


3. As corny as this may sound..I'll have to say, focus on the emotion, guys! Happy, love...whatever.


4. Fair amount of background with smaller focus image positioned to the left or right because center is boring. Make the icons tell you the story. It's better that way.


5. Cut through the nose and discard the upper-head. Looks a little bit weird or funny depends on your point of view, but I still like it.


6. Place the focus subject a little bit to the left or right instead of center.


7. Discard the upper-head and place the image to the left or right. Be sure to cut a little closer to the eyebrows to avoid the subject looking bald.

The tutorials below might give you an idea on how to nicely cropped your image:
1. How to achieve a good image position
2. Might wanna read about this aspect ratio thingy
3. More Cropping Tips