Icon Maker

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I am looking for a program to create icons from standard image files. None of the standard graphics programs that I have are able to save as icons. Anyone know of a good freeware or shareware?

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Favicon has some software which should do the job. I fairly sure I downloaded a free trial that never timed out . . .

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Hi
If I got you correctly, there’s no need to do this. Save your image file as *.bmp and it will appear as a small icon if you set the Registry settings properly. If you want to Save it as an icon file, get hold of Icon Digger 2000 from here , or from my website, use it, and your bmp is resized to a portable icon image.

Rgds

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If you create your image as a BMP and save it , then go into explorer and change it from *.BMP to *.ICO – you have an icon. I’ve created and used loads this way/

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how do make sure it is the right size?

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>Catherine: ” How do you make sure it’s the right size?”

…by using the (freeware) IconDigger, which automatically allows you to save *.ico files in 32×32 pixel format.

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How do you get a transparent background doing it that way?

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Try MicroAngelo

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Catharine – right size
Once you change it to *.ico it doesn’t matter what the original size was – it’s icon size on desktop.

Eileen – Transparent?
White background seems to go transparent. Otherwise I do background same colour as desktop (not ideal for other situations)
Peter H

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Ah, a white background goes transparent! I’ll try that. Thank you.

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Eileen
I’ve just noticed, that since I ‘tweaked’ to ‘use all possible colours’ on icons some time ago (I’m still on w95 with iTweaku) – new icons I create show the white background. All my old icons before this are still transparent where background was white. In WME (and I assume W98) the tweak is built in. I haven’t tried it but I assume if you ‘untweak’, create the icon then ‘retweak’ – this will work.
Peter H

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Hey, so *that’s* the reason! I’ll try your workaround. Good sleuthing.

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In what file format should one save this *.bmp (Monochrome, 16-color, 256-color, 24-bit) prior to renaming it? Does it make any difference? I’ve tried a few tests, and anything white seems to be changing to black. (Win NT 4.0 SP5)

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Gary (Lonelywind)
I haven’t actually made any for some time except a few lwtters of the alphabet in squares but I’ve used TIFFS of all sizes, changed them to *BMP (24-bit I think) and then made the change to *ICO. I’ve never had any trouble (but see my previous response to Eileen on’tweaking’).
Peter H

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Thanks, Peter. “Tweaking,” as I understand it, wouldn’t be possible here, since we are locked out from changing our display settings in NT 4.0 SP5.

Personally, I have been using Microsoft Image Editor version 3.10.031. I believe that program originally was part of Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0.

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Since I got involved in all this communication, I thought I’d better try creating an icon again. I’ve just scanned in one of my cartoons, on a white background as a TIFF image (my standard format for scanning and storing images). I then saved as *.BMP and went into Explorer to make it *.ICO. It is currently 284kb but I just change the size attributes to reduce the file size and as long as there is not too much detail you don’t lose definition. I have a perfect transparent icon.

Peter H

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