[Idea] A Fix For The Hard-to-see Dark Smileys

[BronzeTitan]

I've always had a hard time making out the features of the "dark smileys". A close-up look reveals that only the eyes are white. It's features, and edges of overlaid hands (or whatever), are almost as dark as the black face. A simple one-shot application of brightness and contrast could give it better clarity, like the original smileys . .

[BronzeTitan]

Here's the one-application-to-all of my suggestion for all the dark smileys (from a list in another thread). I also left their transparent backgrounds in place, so these results can be cut out and used for further testing.

The only invasive fix was to overlay new dollar signs onto Money -- darker, bolder, slightly larger, and now recognizable.

[spoRv]

Nice work! I love dark smilies more, but, using the dark background, sadly they have less "punch"!

I'd like to ues the set you posted here.

[BronzeTitan]

Use "the man's day". Less choices, less confusion. 

BTW, is there a larger source for the dark smileys? Working on a larger size before reducing to icons would also improve their clarity.

[spoRv]

Can't remember where I get them...

[BronzeTitan]

LOL Never fear! The Internet remembers!

P r e s e n t i n g   . . .   T h e   B l a c y  ! !  *

https://web.archive.org/web/200510291011...wnload.asp

* courtesy of Rokey and the Internet Archive



Rokey's website disappeared several years ago. However, he or others saw to it that his icons where available on other websites (DeviantArt and FreeIconsDownload).

Of course, you can see that these were designed for the larger display of icons, not the smaller smilelys. Would it work for you if the standard yellow smilelys' black lines were inverted to white and the yellow was changed to dark (other colors to remain the same)?

Here's a rough test (adjusted all-in-one instead of by individual elements) of that scenario, shown 300x against FanRes' dark theme . .

[spoRv]

May you resize them at the actual size, to see how they appear?

[BronzeTitan]

I was afraid of that.   

Of course, I had to redo it (rough is all shortcuts, after all). Note that I made minor pixel alterations to be sure features showed plainly. If you'd like it exactly as the normal smileys, it's easy to change back. The dark smileys are solid black here. That, too, can easily be changed to a lighter black (brighter that the FanRes dark theme background).

[spoRv]

I still love the actual black emoticons, but I do like your version, even if I'll try a grey border, instead of white, that *should* work better; also, some blurring would help, probably.

I think it would be better, at this point, if we go with a single set of emoticons, without mixing two.

[BronzeTitan]

Well, now that I reorganized it, it's easier to make changes. To make it look more like The Blacy, how about this . .

The backgrounds of the color smileys were pulled and manipulated from the normal smiley backgrounds. I added greenish for the sick smiley, but it's just as easy to remove all those colors if coloring is out of place.