August 2014 Giveaway - Twenty-five Vector Icons

[Barbara B]

August 2014 Giveaway - Twenty-five Vector Icons



Take a look at a score plus five interesting, editable, scalable vector icons Gary has created for the Xara Xone this month. By the way, if you do a search in “picture to icon maker”, there’s dozens of free online services. Or here’s a weird way: export any of the icons from Xara as BMP or PNG files. Open MS Paint and save the picture with the *.ico file extension. This doesn’t produce a multiple resolution ico file, but you can’t beat the price. Have fun!Take a look at a score plus five interesting, editable, scalable vector icons Gary has created for the Xara Xone this month. By the way, if you do a search in “picture to icon maker”, there’s dozens of free online services. Or here’s a weird way: export any of the icons from Xara as BMP or PNG files. Open MS Paint and save the picture with the *.ico file extension. This doesn’t produce a multiple resolution ico file, but you can’t beat the price. Have fun!

Download them now!

Show us how you use icons in this thread.

[Rik]

That's a cool giveaway.

Having looked at all the icons, for a long, long time, the Dice is my favourite.
Particularly because it's like the transparent cubes tutorial you did in June.
Excellent.

[Boy]

Thank so much for the icons, Gare, Very useful stuff!

[stygg2003]

Cheers for the icons Gary, much appreciated. My favourite being the dice because it reminds me of the June tut.

Stygg

[handrawn]

thanks for the icons

BTW: it says in the file they are all 32 by 32; this is not actually so, eg the globe is 32 by 27.5 - also if you save one as BMP you do not need to open it in MS Paint and re-save it as ICO [and indeed in my win 8.1 MS Paint that does not appear to be an option], you can just rename the file extension - you won't get transparency, but MS Paint does not do that anyway.... [any more than does a BMP AFAIK]

[stygg2003]

I found exactly what handrawn posted, so I just exported the book icon as a png. with alpha and true colour, it's fine for what I needed.

Stygg.

[Gare]

thanks for the icons

BTW: it says in the file they are all 32 by 32; this is not actually so, eg the globe is 32 by 27.5 - also if you save one as BMP you do not need to open it in MS Paint and re-save it as ICO [and indeed in my win 8.1 MS Paint that does not appear to be an option], you can just rename the file extension - you won't get transparency, but MS Paint does not do that anyway...

You're right on all counts, handrawn. Thanks for pointing out these errors I'll fix now.

Here's how to fix any of the icons that aren't perfectly square:

1. Reduce or increase the size of the dimension that's incorrect, to—I'm going to use 32 in these steps, using the Width of selection field on the Infobar.

2. If you want a 32 × 32 pixel icon, choose the Rectangle tool and hold Shift. Drag a rectangle, and try to get it approximately 32 × 32 pixels, using the Editable items fields as your gauge. Release the mouse button and then type 32 and then 32 in the Editable items Width and Height fields.
3. Choose the Selector tool (the square is still selected, hold Shift and then click the icon so bit shapes are selected, and then press Ctrtl+Shift+L.

4. In the Object Alignment box, click in the center of the graphic proxy box, and then press Apply and then Close.

5. Deselect both shapes.

6. Select the black box and then give it no fill and no outline, then press Ctrl+B to send it to back.

7. Select both objects and then choose Export from the File main menu.

8. You can choose BMP, but in Xara and in MS-Paint, you will lose an alpha channel, because neither program supports BMP with transparency. Which is odd, because Microsoft developers coded the BMP to be able to support a single transparency layer. Macromedia used to recognize and support an alpha in BMPs.



There are a lot of online services (use the search phrase "PNG to ICO") and I cannot vouch for any of them, but if you export to PNG with alpha from Xara, most if not all of these online sites will write you an ICO file with transparency.

Because more than one of our members likes the die, I bought a program from Aha-Soft (.com) a long time ago called IconLover that was $19.95 then and I think $49 now, and I feel that's a little steep for an icon maker, but when I registered back a few years ago, there was a license in perpetuity, so I have the $49 upgrade for free.

IconLover let me assemble a multi-resolution image using one large image and then resizing it in IconLover, it wrote the alpha channel, and it's in the attached file.



I created the die icon back when Xara was Xara xTreme and it was version 5 and I didn't care for the default icon.

Enjoy,

Gary

P.S. I redid the drop shadow using a blend instead of the drop-shadow feature, transparent to 70% black. You'll notice that drop shadows with a heavy Blur amount expand the selected object's perimeter if you go and look in Wireframe View Quality, throwing your measurements for export way off.

[handrawn]

8. You can choose BMP, but in Xara and in MS-Paint, you will lose an alpha channel, because neither program supports BMP with transparency. Which is odd, because Microsoft developers coded the BMP to be able to support a single transparency layer. Macromedia used to recognize and support an alpha in BMPs.

yes I had second thoughts as I added the last bit hence the 'AFAIK' - I have since checked back; it is possible to create a BMP with transparency in Photoshop by specifically creating an alpha channel and then saving as 32bit BMP with 'alpha channel[s] enabled in the export dialog, although in practice that is not a file with transparency as far as programs without channel editing are concerned

[mwenz]

Deleted.

[Gare]

Mike—

That S.O.B. of a site downloaded and installed Search Engine and something else even though I unchecked the download download manger.

I suggest that Greenfish might have been okay when you first downloaded it a while ago, Mike, but I DO NOT RECOMMEND GREENFISH. You gotta comb your installs then, and delete by date. :(

Here's an online site that I just tried. It will create as may sizes of *.ico as you want in one multi-resolution file. Converticon

With transparency if you export your PNG with transparency if you put transparency in the PNG file.

There are no traps on the site, you need to look at what you're converting so read all the options and uncheck ICO sizes you don't want and then click Export and the ICO file will land anywhere your browser specifies.

My Best,

Gary

(This should be its own thread!)