To enhance the appearance of your Windows desktop, one good approach is to customize the desktop icons to your personal style, you can either find and download eye-catching icons from the Internet, or create your own ones with an icon creator.
- Icona V1 2 – Create Your Own Icons From Image Transparent
- Icona V1 2 – Create Your Own Icons From Image Windows 10
To make an icon, you can create an image with general image editing software( e.g. Photoshop or its online alternative: Pixlr ), save the image as PNG format with transparent background, and convert PNG to ICO format subsequently with an icon converter, or use a full function icon editor in the whole process. I prefer the first routine because I’m familiar with Photoshop, and there’s no difference between the icons generated by them.
1. ConvertICO.org( Online )
A large dialog box opens. This dialog box will permit you to create all the image formats you want to include in your icon in one simple step: 6. Type the Name of the new icon project. The root of the image file is proposed by default. Select the images formats to include in the icon by clicking on the images. To create a Windows icon, it. We created IPS with the idea that no icon pack can fit your home screen better than the one you create by yourself. With IPS you can create an icon pack from scratch or you can download and apply one of thousand uploaded every day by our community. The advanced editor allows you to resize and move any element of your custom icon. Use special filters like lights, shadows, textures, and bezels. Create dozens of personalized icons for your App, Web, Creative projects & Startups. Design outlined, solid, webby and flat icons for free! Create Amazing Icons! More than 200 000 icons that will rock your creative projects and interfaces! Upload Your Own icons With IconsFlow you can create a new icon set or update the styling by uploading.
ConvertICO.org is a free online app for creating high quality Windows icons from images in PNG, JPG, BMP or GIF format, it could create a multi-size .ICO file which contains the following sizes: 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, 48×48, 64×64, 96×96, 128×128, 192×192, 256×256.
It supports generating Windows Vista / 7 style icon with PNG compression, and has the ability to extract all images inside a multi-size icon and save them as separate files.
The supported conversion types include: PNG to ICO, JPG to ICO, BMP to ICO, GIF to ICO, ICO to PNG, ICO to JPG, ICO to BMP, ICO to GIF.
2. IcoFX 1.6.4( Windows )
IcoFX 1.6.4 is a powerful, professional, full-function, all-in-one icon editor, it’s able to create, edit and save Windows icons as well as Macintosh icons, it offers virtually any function you required.
The newer versions of IcoFX are no longer free, IcoFX 1.6.4 is the last free version.
Free alternatives to IcoFX:
2.1, GIMP, this open source image manipulation software can be used to replace Adobe Photoshop, it natively supports creating Windows icon from scratch.
2.2, IconDeveloper, it allows to import images made by other software such as Photoshop / GIMP and transform them into .ICO format.
2.3, Greenfish Icon Editor Pro, it could create and manipulate Vista compatible icons, or replace icons in executable files.
2.4, Free Icon Editor, this freeware could make and edit icons with transparency in standard or custom sizes, and sort pictures inside icons.
3. Multiple PNGs to One Icon( Online )
Multiple PNGs to One Icon will combine multiple PNG images into a single Windows icon without changing their quality and sizes, so long as their sizes do not exceed 256×256 px, this makes it possible to create a multi-size icon that includes arbitrary sizes: 64×128, 128×64, 256×128, 100×200, etc.
4. ToYcon( Windows )
ToYcon is the best standalone Windows software for batch icon conversion, to convert images to icons, just drag them from Windows explorer to ToYcon and release the mouse, then you’re done!
ToYcon supports the following image formats: PNG, JPG, BMP, TGA and GIF.
It also supports PNG compression as well as multiple color depth: 4 bits, 8 bits and 32 bits.
5. Convert Icon( Online )
Convert Icon allows to convert images to Windows icon format( .ICO ) or Macintosh icon format( .ICNS ) in different color depth: 1 bit( Monochrome ), 4 bit( 16 colors ), 8 bit( 256 colors ), 16 bit( 65536 colors ) and 24 bit( 16M colors ).
You can use it to make a Windows / Mac icon, convert a Windows icon to Mac format( ICO to ICNS ), or convert Mac icons to Windows format( ICNS to ICO ) depending on your requirement.
6. ICOFormat( Windows / Mac )
ICOFormat is a portable and open source plugin for Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, it provides you the power to open and save a .ICO file with Photoshop directly.
ICOFormat supports Windows( 32-bit & 64-bit ) and Mac OS X.
7. Coolutils( Online )
This online image converter is capable of creating a multi-size, multi-color icon from the image you uploaded, each icon generated by it will consist of 15 elements: 16×16 4-bit 16 colors, 16×16 24-bit true colors, 16×16 32-bit with alpha channel, 32×32 4-bit 16 colors, 32×32 24-bit true colors, 32×32 32-bit with alpha channel, 48×48 4-bit 16 colors, 48×48 24-bit true colors, 48×48 32-bit with alpha channel, 64×64 4-bit 16 colors, 64×64 24-bit true colors, 64×64 32-bit with alpha channel, 256×256 4-bit 16 colors, 256×256 24-bit true colors, 256×256 32-bit with alpha channel.
8. X-Icon Editor( Online )
This icon maker lets you create high resolution icons online, first import an image from your hard drive, then edit it with various tools: brush tool, pencil tool, type tool, eyedropper tool, paint bucket tool, line tool, rectangle tool, circle tool and eraser tool, then export and download the final icon to your computer, it supports 4 sizes: 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, 64×64.
X-Icon Editor is based on HTML5 technique, so it does not support these outdated browsers such as Internet Explorer 8, etc.
9. Image To Icon Converter( Online )
With this program anybody could turn a certain image into a multi-size Windows icon in a few seconds, it allows to customize specific sizes, for instance, 16×16, 32×32, 72×72, 256×256.
10. ConvertIcon( Online )
ConvertIcon is a online tool based upon flash which will not transfer your files across the Internet, similar to ConvertICO.org, it’s able to create multi-resolution icons from PNG, GIF and JPEG pictures, or convert an icon to PNG format.
A drawback of this app is that all of the icons created with it are uncompressed.
11. Image to Icon Converter( Online )
This free utility enables to create a Windows icon from PNG, JPG, BMP or GIF format for free, the supported size and color formats include: 32-bits( 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, 48×48, 128×128, 256×256 ), 256-colors( 16×16 , 24×24, 32×32, 48×48 ).
12. Convert your image to ICO format( Online )
This online service could create a single-resolution Windows Vista / 7 icon from a variety of image formats including ANI, BMP, CUR, DDS, EPS, GIF, GIF87, ICO, JP2, JPEG, JPG, PNG8, PNG24, PNG32, PSD, RGB, RGBA, SVG, TGA, TIFF, etc.
It allows to change the image size during conversion, please notice that the output icon does not work on Windows XP or older versions.
13. AveIconifier( Windows )
AveIconifier is a lightweight freeware for Windows that allows to convert PNG files to ICO format or vice versa with drag and drop, it’s portable, no installation needed.
Icona V1 2 – Create Your Own Icons From Image Transparent
14. Online Pic To Icon Converter( Online )
With this online application you can create an animated favicon for website or desktop icon for Windows / iPad / iPhone / Android, it allows to squeeze or crop your image to square icon, and supports sharpening enhancement.
15. Online Icon Maker( Online )
This online icon generator allows to create a favicon icon for website from scratch, the dimension of the output file is 16×16 pixels, it’s not large enough to represent a Windows desktop icon.
16. ConvertIco( Online )
ConvertIco allows to create a multi-size icon for Windows from a single image, you can either upload an image from local computer, or select it from a URL.
17. Pic to Icon Converter( Online )
This picture to icon conversion program provides the same functions as http://iconj.com/pic_to_icon_converter.php.
18. PNG to ICO Converter( Online )
This is a simple online ico converter that lets you convert PNG image to ICO format and vice versa.
19. Pic2Icon( Online )
Pic2Icon is a free icon generator that lets you build an icon online, it supports 5 icon types: Windows XP icon, Windows 7 icon, Windows CE icon, website favicon icon, site icon for iPad and iPhone.
Pic2Icon enables to add 15 different special effects( Motion Blur, Oil Painting, Frosted Glass, High Saturation, Old Photo, Grayscale B&W, etc. ) to your picture, and rotate, resize, crop or sharpen your image before converting.
20. DeGraeve Favicon Generator( Online )
DeGraeve Favicon Generator is an online favicon editor which enables to import a picture from your computer, draw on it with brush and finally download it as 16×16 ICO file.
This article provides information on the following topics: •Create the Windows Icon from an existing image •Create icons in the style of Windows using Image Objects |
In this topic, we'll see how to create Windows icons.
The standard Windows icons now includes the following image formats (grayed formats are optional):
256x256 - RGB/A | 64x64 - RGB/A | 48x48 - RGB/A | 32x32 - RGB/A | 24x24 - RGB/A | 16x16 - RGB/A |
256x256 - 256c | 64x64 - 256c | 48x48 - 256c | 32x32 - 256c | 24x24 - 256c | 16x16 - 256c |
256x256 - 16c | 64x64 - 16c | 48x48 - 16c | 32x32 - 16c | 24x24 - 16c | 16x16 - 16c |
The problem is that if you simply make an icon and save it in standard Windows XP ICO format, the resulting file will be around 400Kb on disk. The solution is to compress the images. Only the 256x256 images are compressed. The compression scheme used is PNG (Portable Network Graphic) because it has a good lossless ratio and supports alpha channel (transparency). Based on preliminary tests, the compressed icon sizes are 100Kb to 150Kb.
To get more information on Windows Icons, we recommend you to read this topic: Introducing Vista Icons
Creating the Windows Icon from an existing image
Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a Windows compressed icon using Axialis IconWorkshop. You can download a 30-day Tryout version of IconWorkshop here.
1. Create a 256x256 version of your icon image using any image/vector editor. Save your artwork with smooth transparency (32 BPP alpha channel) using a file format that is compatible with Axialis IconWorkshop: BMP, PNG, JP2000, PSD.
You can also transfer your work from Adobe Photoshop® using the Axialis transfer plug-in (see this tutorial) or you can create an icon by assembling several image objects (see this tutorial).
In this procedure, we'll use this file: down.png (we recommend you to download it and save it on your disk - use right click and choose 'Save Target As'). You can also find the file in the Librarian, folder 'Objects/Pack 2 - Realistic Buttons'. If this object pack is not present in the folder, you can download it from here.
2. Launch Axialis IconWorkshop and open the image file. It is loaded in an image document window, not an icon editor window, as shown below ():
3. If the scale-1:1 preview window is not in 256x256 mode, the preview image will be cropped. It is recommended that you switch to 256x256 preview mode if you want to work with 256x256 Windows icons. To switch to this mode, right-click in the preview window, a menu opens. Choose '256x256 Display'. The preview window now looks as shown above in floating mode ().
Use the same method to return to the previous state: choose '128x128 Display', remove the 'Floating Window' option and use the mouse to dock the window.
4. Select the whole image. Choose Edit/Select All or press Ctrl+A. An animated selection rectangle is now drawn around the image.
5. Choose File/Create Windows® Icon From Selection or press 'I'. A large dialog box opens. This dialog box will permit you to create all the image formats you want to include in your icon in one simple step:
6. Type the Name of the new icon project (). The root of the image file is proposed by default.
7. Select the images formats to include in the icon () by clicking on the images. To create a Windows icon, it is recommended that you follow the Windows specifications as specified above. Don't forget to add the 256x256 Windows Vista formats in RGB/A (Windows® XP), 256 and 16 color modes ().
8. To create a fully-compliant Windows icon, you'll need to compress the 256x256 formats in PNG. Select the associated option ().
9. You can also choose to apply the dithering option to the 256/16 color images as well as add a filter effect to smooth/sharpen the resulting images in RGB/A mode (). View the results in the preview images.
Paintstorm studio 2 43 resz. 10. When done, click OK. A new icon project is created in a document window:
11. The main window with the grid () is the edition area where you can retouch the icon. The gray chessboard-like texture behind the icon is the transparent portion of the icon (the alpha channel info has been preserved). The scale 1:1 preview is displayed in the associated window ().
12. All the available formats are displayed in a list (). You can select them to edit () or preview () them. See the application built-in help (press F1) to learn how to add/remove formats or work with this icon project.
13. The compressed format (only the 256x256 formats can be compressed) are marked with this overlay PNG compression image: . You can add/remove this option by choosing Draw/Compressed Image Format (Windows Vista) or by pressing 'K'. You can also use the local toolbar or a right-click menu.
14. When done, save the icon by choosing Edit/Save or pressing Ctrl+S.
Create an Icon in the Style of Windows using Axialis Image Object Packs
Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a Vista compressed icon using Axialis IconWorkshop and the Axialis Image Object Packs. This tutorial requires the following items: How to start a game on 3 on 3 freestyle.
•Axialis IconWorkshop 6.01 or more (Download 30-Day Tryout version)
Icona V1 2 – Create Your Own Icons From Image Windows 10
•Axialis 'Realistic Buttons' Object Pack (Download Tryout Pack)
The standard Windows icons now includes the following image formats (grayed formats are optional):
256x256 - RGB/A | 64x64 - RGB/A | 48x48 - RGB/A | 32x32 - RGB/A | 24x24 - RGB/A | 16x16 - RGB/A |
256x256 - 256c | 64x64 - 256c | 48x48 - 256c | 32x32 - 256c | 24x24 - 256c | 16x16 - 256c |
256x256 - 16c | 64x64 - 16c | 48x48 - 16c | 32x32 - 16c | 24x24 - 16c | 16x16 - 16c |
The largest image format is 256x256 XP (ie RGB with alpha channel). To achieve the best results we'll start the project using this new format and work with it to assemble the Objects. When finished, we'll create all the other formats using the resulting 256x256 graphic as a template. Let's create our new icon project:
1. Launch Axialis IconWorkshop. Choose File/New/Windows Icon Project or press Ctrl+W. A dialog box opens:
2. Type the name of the project (): 'Down'.
3. Now specify the format of the first image to add in the project: In Colors, choose 'XP with Alpha Channel (RGB/A 32 bits)' (). In Size in Pixels, choose and '256x256 (Vista)' ().
4. As we want the 256x256 format to be used under Windows, we will choose to compress it as a special PNG file: Click the option 'Compress 256x256 Vista format' ().
5. When done, click OK. A new icon project window is created ():
6. If the scale-1:1 preview window is not in 256x256 mode, the preview image will be cropped. We recommend that you switch to 256x256 preview mode to work with 256x256 Windows icons. To switch to this mode, right-click inside the preview window and a menu will open. Choose '256x256 Display'. The preview window now looks as shown above in 'floating mode' ().
Use the same method to return to the previous state: choose '128x128 Display', remove the 'Floating Window' option and use the mouse to dock the window. The time has come to be creative which you'll find easy and a lot of fun with IconWorkshop. Before we start, don't forget that each step of the creation can be undone/redone up to 16 steps (Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y).
7. In the Librarian window (choose View/Librarian if it is not visible), select the 'Objects/Pack 2 - Realistic Buttons/Circle' folder (). If the pack is not yet installed download and install it from this page. A list of available Object are displayed in the contents window below (). Find the 'Background - Green.png' file and select it ().
8. When done, use a mouse Drag-and-Drop to add it into the project as shown above (). The Object is added to the project as a floating selection (). Take a look at the quality of the artwork in the Scale 1:1 window ().
Congratulations, you've just added your first Image Object to your project! As you can see it's very intuitive. Now let's continue and add other objects to build the icon.
IMPORTANT To follow the next steps, the 'Preserve Transparency' option must be set (press 'T' or select Draw/Preserve Transparency). If this option is not set, the transparency will not be kept each time you add a new image object and the objects already added will be fully replaced. |
9. From the librarian, select the file 'Inner Glow 2 - Black.png' and add it to the project using the same method. The resulting image now includes a red light effect as shown below:
10. From the librarian, add the file 'Border 01.png' to the project:
11. Let's add the arrow. Select the folder 'Objects/Pack 2 - Realistic Buttons/Symbols' and add the file 'Arrow Down.png' to the project:
12. A good idea is to add a glossy effect to increase the realism of the icon. From the librarian, select the folder 'Objects/Pack 2 - Realistic Buttons/Circle' and add the file 'Glossy 04 .png' to the project. Here is the result:
13. The final touch is the shadow under the icon. Let's add the 'Shadow Bottom 01 - Black.png'. The image object is placed by default in foreground by IconWorkshop. In our case, the shadow should be placed behind the icon. A feature permits to do this in IconWorkshop: Press the End key on the keyboard. The shadow is now placed in background.
You're done! The resulting image should look like this:
Now that the largest image is complete (256x256 RGB/A), we'll create all the other formats of the icons from this one. This is done in one step with Axialis IconWorkshop Corporate Edition. Using the Personal Edition, you need to create each format manually (see the product help file for more info).
14. Choose Draw/Add Several Image Formats from This Image or press 'V'. A dialog box opens:
15. Select the images formats to include in the icon ( / ) by clicking on the associated check boxes. Follow the specifications as we defined them above for Windows icons. Don't forget to compress the 256x256 image formats ()
16. You can also choose to apply the dithering option to the 256/16 color images as well as adding a filter effect to smooth/sharpen the resulting images in RGB/A mode (). View the results in the preview images.
17. When done, click OK. The new formats are automatically created and added to the project ():
18. Take a moment to admire your work :) Click on the various formats () and see the resulting icon at scale 1:1 in the preview window (). You can change the background lightness of the Scale 1:1 window simply by clicking in it using the left button of the mouse. This will allow you to see how the icon is displayed on different backgrounds with different lightness settings.
19. Save your icon: Choose File/Save or press Ctrl+S. It will be saved as Windows ICO format.