when creating a 16X16 icon, (for example the search icon in IE that is a picture of a globe with a magnifying glass), how is this done? Is it done at a larger size in photoshop and then reduced? What i don't understand is how you get the gradations to get a realistic look. I can do very simple icons with 16 colors using a tool like icon edit pro, filling in one bitmap at a time. But i need an approach for adding depth to my icons. When i blow up the search icon, I wouldn't have been able to do that one pixel at a time. Is it first created at a larger size in a photohshop and then indexed?
Thanks in advance!
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Here's the application I am using for editing icons:
Microangelo Studio
free to try at:
http://www.impactsoft.com/
very simple application, lets you edit all sort of icons, every size and with every color depths..
to get realistic icons, you can take a high quality image and copy paste it in the icon editor.. but like leidson said, you'll always have to retouch some pixels..
I get sweet results using Lightwave3d to render out images in any size I want with 17x anti-aliasing turned on the look killer. You may have to get a little crafty when making 16 color palletes because of anti-aliasing colors are calculated through background and object color but it is all pretty trivial.
Ramrok
May I recommend a simple little program called Icon Forge (Win)?
Can de downloaded from http://www.favicon.com/.
I only used it to make favicons, but found it very handy, so it should be of interest I hope.
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klykken
Axialis is good stuff, www.axialis.com
Try choosing 16x16 and giving it a color depth of 256
btw:
Microsoft has is own complier for the spinny globe.
Favortie icons should be saved as favicon.ico so it loads automatically without you having to put the <link> tag.
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by: leidsonPosted on 2001-02-15 at 09:12:57ID: 5846449
I use Microsoft Visual C++ for making icons, but that's probably because I have access to just about any software I want through work. I'm sure there are other tools out there. Depending on the type of icon (I am usually asked to create 16x16, 32x32, 48x48 in both 256 colors and windows colors) I will either 1) make the icon in Photoshop, shrink the pallet to 256, paste it into MVC++, then adjust any weird pixels one at a time or 2) just create it it MVC++ one pixel at a time. If I create it in PS, the key is to turn off all anti-aliasing when selecting, pasting or filling. The way to get a gradient (either to give the look of a softened edge or to get an actual gradient transition from one color to the next) is to dither pixels of different colors. For example, an icon I made recently contains a sun that starts with yellow at the top and moves to red at the bottom. Pixels at the top of the sun are all yellow, but become intersparced with more and more orange pixels until all the pixels are orange, then red. (This is in 256 colors.) Be advised, this type of color transition did not look good using windows colors so I chose to use a solid colored sun.