Help an image editing n00b edit some images

Factual Questions
1

I have a seemingly very simple task I want to do.

I have some icons I downloaded and want to use for my android phone, but I want them a different color. No problem, I think, I’ll just load up the ol’ paint.NET, and use Mr.Fill Tool…only, no…that makes them look ugly. There is some kind of…gradient? Shadow? I don’t even know the name of what I need to have happen, so that’s part of what makes it so hard to happen.

Here is the icon.

Here is it after my crappy attempt to just use the “fill” tool.

So…what do I need to do to not have it look like shit?

2

The original text was created with drop shadow turned on.

The only way to color it is with the paintbrush tool. That would be very tedious.

It would be easier to recreate the graphic. Pick a font, color, and use the text tool. Drop Shadow can be turned off. It’s usually a check box in the text tool.

in photoshop, I’d start by creating a new image. maybe?? 300x300 with a default white background.
Use the text tool in a big font. Crop and then resize (smaller) to whatever I needed,

3

See, the “picking the font” is the tricky part…from the forum that I got the icon pack from, I know the font (Agency FB Bold,) but it’s not one installed on my computer…a cursory google search seems people want me to pay them to get it? Yeah, I’m not paying $40 for a freaking font.

Long story short, this icon pack doesn’t have all the icons I want in the colors I want, but it has some I’m already using so I need whatever new ones I make to match.

4

Is the icon from TallMin? You might go there and ask Lekky if he could make them in different colors.

5

I found a dl for font agency fb bold here. I haven’t dl the rar. May be worth a look. Virus check it thoroughly before opening.
The first three links on the page.
http://www.uploadcity.com/?q=font+agency+fb+bold

6

That’s not so bad. If you put it in GIMP or Photoshop, you can change the hue.

7

Those icons are so small that it’s hard to tell, but the red one doesn’t look much “crappier” than the green one. I don’t know what aceplace57 meant about the drop shadow - the drop shadow is the same colour in both, so that doesn’t matter. I think the only slight problem may be that the original was aliased, so there were slightly different shades of green round the edge to “smooth” the outline of the text, whereas the red one looks a bit jagged because there’s no aliasing. You could use a blur or feather tool to recreate that.

Or, as foolsguinea said, change the hue. That would give better results.

8

And, if you’re careful, you can change only portions. In fact, I’m surprised other methods of colorizing are even being mentioned.

9

Here’s how you’d do it in Photoshop. First you need to select the green, using the magic wand tool. Then “expand” and “feather” the selection to avoid jaggedy edges, then play around with the “hue” until you get the color you want.

I don’t know anything about paint.net, so I don’t know if there are comparable functions.

Of course you’re limited by the crappy original you’re working from . . . but if you’re only using it as an icon it might not matter.

10

Thanks for the help. I was able to change the hue in GIMP pretty easily. It was still kind of a guessing game, but I had one of the colors I was trying to match right next to the one I was changing and I got it close enough for a small icon on a phone.