Today we are going to take a dive into how to properly design a RSS icon. I am speaking about one of those large, glassy RSS icons and the tool we will be using is Adobe Photoshop. To set the records straight, I will be using Adobe Photoshop 7 for this tutorial because this is what I have here. So, let’s see:

Step 1: Start with a blank page, create a new layer and name it “base” and draw a circle on this new layer using the elliptical marquee tool. Keep CTRL pressed while making the selection for a perfect circle.

Step 2: Pick a color and using the Paint bucket tool, fill the circle with the that color, let’s say orange. Make a new layer and call it “over”. Then, using the Select menu,m pick Feather and enter the value 30 and accept. Fill that smaller circle with a lighter color, let’s say yellow. Keeping CTRL pressed, left click on the layer named “base”, the orange one. At that moment, you should have a selection of the larger circle. Go again to the Select menu and pick Inverse. At the moment you will have a selection of the space outside the orange circle. Press Delete key and then CTRL + D, to deselect it. You should have something similar to the image below:

Step 3: make a new layer on top of these existing 2, name it “over 2″. CTRL + Left click base layer, then using the pen tool, draw something similar to this:

Right click with the Pen tool still selected, from the contextual menu choose Make selection and by the 2 selections intersecting each other you should have something similar to this:

From the Select menu, pick Modify->Contract and enter the value 20. Then Select -> Feather and enter 10. You should end up with a smaller selection with round corners.

Pick the Paint bucket tool and fill the selection with white. You should have something like this:

Step 4: Make a new layer, name it “circle”. Using the Elliptical Marquee tool draw a circular selection. Remember to keep CTRL pressed for a perfect circle. Pick from the menu Edit, Stroke and enter 10 as a value. Press Enter. Create a new layer, name it circle 2, draw a new circular selection, smaller than the previous one and again, Edit, Stroke, 10. Now you should have 2 different layers, one with a circle still selected. Be sure to select the layer holding the circle THAT IS NOT SELECTED, the layer named “circle” Pick from the menu named Layer the sub menu named Align to selection and pick Vertical center and then again Horizontal center. Now you should have 2 circles that are both centered compared to the other one. Don’t bother for the rest of the image. If you don’t like the circles, delete the one that is not nice and draw another one.

Also make another layer, name it “main circle”, make another selection, but this time fill it with white instead of stroking it. Then, selecting the top layer from the 3 layers with circles, pick Layer, Merge down or just press CTRL + E. This should combine the layer that is selected and the one below it. Do the same until the 3 layers with circles are on the same layer. You should end up with something similar to this:

Step 5: Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, make a selection from outside the circles until half of the circles and hit delete. Then do the same on the vertical direction, move the circles to a lower left corner and you should end up with something looking like this:

Pretty nice, in my opinion, a really glassy RSS icon that you can use for your blog!

Have fun, Stumble and Digg and in case you still need directions to finish this tutorial, feel free to contact me or to comment using this blog!

Enjoy!

By the way, click here for the source file of this tutorial. For the rest of you who want to learn a bit more about Photoshop, you should check this Photoshop resource site. Have a great day!