It’s that time of year again! 2007 is now long gone, having been replaced by the more vicious, cunning character of 2008. When I first started the Minty Ferret back in the summer of good ‘07, I wanted to create a great resource for fellow Photoshop users. It was after the mess that my previous host caused that I realized I would not be able to keep the website updated frequently with the tutorials, freebies, and resources that I wanted to.
I have thus decided, in an effort to keep this blog active, alive, and vibrant, that I will be expanding the Minty Ferret to encompass much more – photoshop news, tutorials, and freebies will of course still be provided. However they might be interspersed with smaller tidbits of news, including those of the non-Adobe type (most likely relating to my other loves, which include many randomly Awesome Things).
So stay tuned! The site may soon go undergo some minor aesthetic changes in response to the wider focus, but the Minty Ferret will still be that furry little blog you all know and love.

Create a cute Christmas Bauble to go along with your candy cane!

Just in time for the holidays – learn how to draw a candy cane in photoshop! The great thing about this tut is that it’s not too hard, but the end result looks great.

Just in time for Halloween, learn how to make this cartoonish eyeball in Photoshop. Get creative with the iris and pupils to make something monstrous!

This eyeball was actually inspired by a ring I bought at the Buskers this summer.

So pop open Photoshop and head on past the break!

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Starbursts/sunbursts have always looked cool to me. It probably stems from my affinity for all things Japanese, but they’re just so fun to make and use and look at. In this tutorial I’ve included about a billion different ways (or four) of making starbursts in Photoshop – each looking a bit different than the other.

So flip a coin, roll a die, or hope for divine intervention, and pick your path so we can get started already!

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What if everything you touched turned to gold?

Now you can have that power – without the donkey ears.

This is a tutorial on turning objects into gold with Photoshop. I find this works better on smooth, shiny, or artificial items – although this can be applied to living things the effect is not as convincing.

This tutorial was suggested by Mizaks, owner of The Critical Critics.

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Have you always wondered how to get a photograph to have such nice, rounded edges?
Well, using masks, there is an easy way to do that in Photoshop. And the effect doesn’t stop at curved edges! If you can lasso it, you can mask it.

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(thank you knmt for sending me this tut!)

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create spiffy-looking complex geometric shapes using pre-defined Photoshop shapes. The final effect looks pretty cool, almost like tattoos, and they are dead easy and fun to make!

Let’s get started.

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Icons are usually small, detailed works or art that are useful for a heckuvalotta things. I’ve seen them used a lot on the web as navigation or used to accent a button, as well as in interfaces/program design, and on desktops for us compulsive customizers.

Here I’ve collected a list of sites which provide free icon sets. Although you don’t need to pay for these, since they are free, it does not mean you can do whatever you want with them. Make sure to read the respective terms and conditions for each website!

FamFamFam
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/

Icons provided by FamFamFam (the brainchild of Mark James) are frequently spotted all over the web. Offering a massive collection of over a thousand different carefully crafted icons, this should be one of the first places you stop by on your hunt. His Silk Set is immensely popular, and he’s designed a Mini Set purposely for the web, as well as a collection of minilicious Country Flags.

2pt3 – Twotone Icons
http://2pt3.com/news/twotone-icons-for-free/

Design by Paul Jarvis, this pixel-perfect 75 icon set comes in – you guessed it – two tones. Bold, forward, simple, and straight to the point! He’s also provided the PSD files as well, should you wish to change the colours.

MouseRunner
http://www.mouserunner.com/Spheres_Icons_Index.html

MouseRunner is run by Ken Saunders, a legally-blind graphic artist. That hasn’t hindered his ability in the least – he has designed quite a handful of different icon sets, all of which sport a very Web 2.0 glossy style. His icons are well-crafted and come in a variety of colours. Being spherical, they probably will find their use as buttons or badges of honour (He’s a big Firefox fan, and it shows!).

Drunkey Love
http://www.el73.be/drunkey-love/downloads/

The Drunkey Love iconset is another large collection (100+!) of tiny, hand-pixelled icons. Similar to the FamFamFam Silk set, but with a more rugged look, these icons will surely find it’s calling on the web. Either that, or they can be left to ferment in a folder, available for whenever you need a quick pick-me-up.

Crystal Icons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Clear

Everaldo Coelho has painstakingly made and collected over 200 large, slick, crystal icons, and has passed them on to you to use freely. The link above leads you to a page where you can view all the icons available. Make sure to visit Coelho’s Development Website to download the (huge!) icon files.

N.Design
http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/mini-pixel-icons/

Gorgeous and practical, N. Design Studios has really outdone themselves with this icon set. Designed by Nick La, these are all extremely well-made, and dead useful. The set includes alternate icons for file types, shopping carts, credit cards, navigation buttons, print icons – you name it! Most icons also come in complementary colours as well. However do take a look at the license – at the time of writing you’re free to use up to ten icons without credit, but after that it’s either link back or pay a small fee.

Matt Ball
http://www.mattballdesign.com/portfolio/

Enter Matt Ball, and his delightful, colourful Mac-looking icon sets. His Developer Icon pack is particularly useful for toolbars and application design, and he’s also got a small set of icons featuring mobile phones to download freely as well.

Mini Icons
http://www.brandspankingnew.net/archive/2006/12/hohoho.html

Mini means mini! These eyeball-straining icons are a mere 10×10px, and look clear and great. It takes skill to design something so small and yet still recognizable! Not to mention, this is quite a large collection, with 113 icons to date. He’s also created slightly larger (16×16px) Doctype Icons, with 42 of those making up the set.

IconBuffet
http://www.iconbuffet.com/

I’ve saved my favourite for last! IconBuffet offers a tasty platter of icons in bite-sized morsels. They work differently from the other free icon sites – click on ‘Free Delivery’ at the top – you will need to sign up to receive your first (random) icon set. Following that, you will receive a free ‘delivery’ each month – and you can even trade and give deliveries to friends! But keep at it and soon you’ll be sporting a large collection of slick, scrumptious, and whimsical icons.

Hope that was enough to get you started with your collection. If you’ve found other great icon resources leave a comment and I’ll check it out!

Regular readers of the Minty Ferret may have realized that I’ve recently added a favicon to the site. Favicons are little images that show up beside the web address and bookmarks – just look above. See the ferret paw-print? That’s a favicon.

So here’s a quick tutorial on making a favicon and uploading it so it works on your website.

Open a 16×16px document.

Design your favicon. You only have a small area to work with, so keep it simple! You might want to stick to just a letter, a portion of your logo, or something uncomplicated that represents your website.

Now select File > Save for Web.

Although favicons are .ico files, there is no option to save it as such in Photoshop. We need to save it as a .gif and then use a third-party software to convert it to a favicon-friendly file.

Once you’ve finished saving it as a .gif, head on over to Favicon from Pics. Upload your .gif image to their site.

Now download the provided file to your computer.

Unzip the folder…

And upload the favicon.ico file to the root of your website.

Add the following code between the HEAD tags on every page you want your favicon to show.

Note: If you’ve done this and your favicon is still not working, you have have to specify the full path to the icon. For example, I had to use http://mintyferret.com/favicon.ico instead of /favicon.ico to get it to work.

Upload the revised files to your webspace. And there you have it! Your very own favicon.

Looking for favicon inspiration? The Favicon Gallery has a nice list of favicons for you to peruse.