How do I make a favicon?

Question

I'm trying to make a favicon with the first part of the logo (PSA) for a website I'm building but I'm stumped how? I'm still quite a fledgling when it comes to Photoshop cc and Illustrator cc so any help will be great.

Answer 1

In Photoshop:

Start with using the crop tool to crop it into a square with just the Circle. Do not distort it to make it a perfect circle - leave it as an oval, and just have extra space on the sides. (Make sure to save a copy of the original artwork)

Then use the magic wand selection to remove all the white - make it transparent (If you don't it will end up looking weird on the browser (since most browsers color isn't white)

Note, it may look better to just leave the white in the inside and transparent the outside - that's up to you.

Then resize the image to 16x16px or possibly higher Read more about it on Stack Overflow..

Save file as png (to preserve transparency - jpg and other formats won't do it)

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You can then use an online tool to convert your png into a favicon (some of the popular simple website builders will let you just put it in as a png)

_{Worth noting, that some website creating tools allow you to just upload a high res png of the favicon and they will do the scaling for you - you just upload the image and the system takes care of the rest.}

Answer 2

Don't do it yourself, especially if you're not sure how to proceed. To be fully compatible (and hence useful), a favicon has to be created in a variety of formats and size.

I would recommend using an on-line solution / generator like https://realfavicongenerator.net/ , once you cropped your image successfully (using one of the other answers). Another option would be to follow the (long, inclusive, using Photoshop) tutorial at http://www.emergeinteractive.com/insights/detail/The-Essentials-of-FavIcons-in-2017

I provide more technical details, oriented at webmasters, in another answer.

Answer 3

Use the crop tool in Photoshop, and set the height and the width as much you need, usually 16x16, 50x50 o 150x150. This will create the crop square

Drag the image to the right so that the crop square fits on the left

Crop image and save to PNG

Done!