I've been googling to no avail, so I am here at my "go to" place for graphics answers. I want to know how to make a photo into an emoji/icon. I have seen an app that you have to use on mobile operating systems, and it's limited. What I want to do is take a png photo and make it the size and resolution it needs to be to use as an icon, and especially need to know how to get it to work like an emoji, or a smilie, ... incorporated into lines of text.

If your using Windows have a look at, Greenfish Icon Editor Pro.
I believe it's free and also has a portable version.

I use a mac. I managed to figure out how to make an icon, but have no idea how to make it work like an emoji, within lines of text.

isnt an emoticon just a very small image that you embed into a text document ?

that shouldnt be a problem with emails or word/openoffice, etc documents

basically, an emoji is like a letter but it's a graphic like the smilies...you type it in using the emoji keyboard.... What I was hoping to so was to be able type in any icon I make. I am thinking that I can go about it the long way by making tiny icons and uploading to photo bucket and then linking. But I would much rather be able to add it to my special keyboards. I cannot type in the emoji pics on this comment, it causes an error, I can only type in the smilies from the smile box at left.

hm, it sounds like your problem is more of a mac-question

i remember you could do your own smilies in the yahoo-messenger, but that was a feature of the program

after reading your post, it sounded like what you want is a bit like dingbats/wingdings, so maybe having the smilies as another font could be a solution

I think making a font would work, but I don't think I can manage that. I can try when I have time, and see what happens, lol.

I googled "emoji keyboard" because I was curious. I found this: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4976 so I conclude that it's an iOS specific feature.

The emoticons here on GimpChat provide a short-cut way to embed a link to an image. For example the you used gets translated into a link to images/smilies/gaah.gif which gets embedded when the page is rendered for a browser.

If I try to put the : gaah code into GimpForums, it has no idea what I'm trying to do.

I think that embedding links manually will be the only way you're going to be able to do this everywhere (and then only in places that support it).

Kevin

Since I only have a few emoji type icons I want to make, I think I will just have to look up what size I need to fit into a text line, and upload the png to a photo hosting site, and use direct link. Unless there is an easier way to link. This would work in blogs and forums, not so sure it will work right in facebook or twitter, they seem to post urls into their own line. We shall see when I have time to experiment. As for 'embed', I am not sure how that works, I only know html codes for adding pics like from photo bucket.

That's what I mean by "embedding" - i.e. appears here, but is hosted elsewhere.

Kevin

thanks, that was my back up plan if no other way was found.