How to make a custom image cursor

This tutorial is teach you how to make your own custom image cursor for your tumblr.

WHAT YOU REQUIRE:

• Photoshop or Gimp

GIMP has many of the same tools as Photoshop and is free with no trials or charge.

To download GIMP click here!

If you want Photoshop then I’m afraid I can’t supply you with the link I used since the blog deactivated but I suggest you just GOOGLE it.

Technically you can even use Paint for some aspects of the tutorial, but I recommend using Photoshop/GIMP as it’ll be easier to follow, but you may do as you please ^.^!

For this tutorial I am using ‘Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended Edition’, but I reckon that the features are roughly the same in most versions.

STEP ONE:

Find an image of your choice, make sure it has a white/one colour background as it’ll make it easier in the later stages of this tutorial to crop the background.

I’ve chosen this picture of pikachu.

(I found it off Google, if it’s yours, message me and I’ll give you credit).

Then I edited it, you don’t have to do this, I just wanted to because I wanted the image to look more sharpened and high quality.

STEP TWO:

Open your chosen software and then open your chosen image.

Then unlock the background layer, UNLESS you started with a layer 1 automatically then you won’t have to.

If you can’t read it then I’ll explain.

Just double click the blank space next the the word ‘Background’ then a popup…should…popup, just click okay and your previous locked background layer should now be an unlocked ‘Layer 0/1’.

STEP THREE:

Now find the magic wand tool. 

(If you’re more experienced you can use alternative methods such as the lasso tool, ect.)

Then click the picture’s background and press the delete button on your keyboard.

Also, if there’s any other white background such as between arms, legs, ect. Delete that too.

Then hold CTRL + D, to deselect.

STEP FOUR:

Go to ‘Image’ on the top tab and click on it.

A menu will popout and from there you should click ‘Image Size’.

Put the width to 100px, anything higher doesn’t seem to load on tumblr. So I recommend a width of anything to 100px. 100px being the maximum.

It will automatically change the height as well - which is useful because it will make your image proportions even - making the image not oddly stretched, widened, ect.

If it does look pixelated, then you should pick a more high quality picture, and if it looks widened/stretched/ect then the software you’re using doesn’t automatically change the height and width so that it’s even, which means you’ll have to do it yourself.

If you’re using the same software as me (Photoshop) and it’s squashed/stretched/ect it means you must have forgotten to select ‘Constrain Proportions’.

My image has too much of extra space at the top so, I’m going to crop that off, you don’t have to I’m just putting it here, again because there’s always some who asks ^^” I’m going to do this by selecting the parts I want then going to Image > Crop.

STEP FIVE:

Zoom in! (I zoomed in to about 1000% but this can vary.)

It will look pixelated at THIS stage but that’s okay because when you zoom to 100% it should look normal.

STEP SIX:

Switch from whatever tool you were using previously to the pencil tool.

Make sure that the pencil is set to a size of 1px (pixel).

The reason that you need a pencil is because it is easier to make sure that it is more accurate as you can then just make the larger square one smaller square at a time. So instead of thinking it as 1 pixel, you can think of it as 1 square ^^.

So, with that said, make a square in the top left corner.

Make four mini squares (1px) making a larger square (4px).

Then add another four ‘squares’ (pixels).

…and another four ‘squares’ (pixels).

You can stop here or you can carry on to get a larger cursor.

So now, just add another four ‘squares’ (pixels).

…and again!

You can also stop here or you carry on to make your cursor like this:

By doing this:

Now here are the three results, zoomed out, that you would have achieved (it varies between the three because you may have stopped at different stages during the cursor making and if you used different sized images, ect.).

I thought that the cursor was too small so I just extended it. Here is a picture of the pixels, if you want to do the same cursor as me.

Here is my final result:

STEP SEVEN:

Save your cursor as a ‘PNG file’.

…and that’s it! You’re done ^^!

Ask me if you need help with anything extra!..but if you go anon then be SPECIFIC! ◕‿◕ 

Here is a link to my other cursor related tutorials which include how to add it to your tumblr and how to make two different cursors.

Here is another link to a collection of cursors in case you give up and just decide to use one made by others.