tiny pictures (icons)

[juergen]

Greetings,

does anybody have an idea how people come up with sometimes pretty descent looking pictures with only the size 32x32 and 256 colors ?
I spent a lot of hours today trying to create a new icon for a piece of software I am developing. When I look at some icons companies like M$ create I am simply amazed.

Let me show you what I came up with after some time. The leftmost is the current icon I use (it is from the Hemera CD that came with CorelXara 2 from i/us so nothing I created at all). For the next version I would like a new icon. Any feedback would be appreciated.

One of the really naughty problems is that I need the same in 16x16 as well.

juergen

http://herling.com/pictures/no0815l.jpg

[juergen]

Greetings,

does anybody have an idea how people come up with sometimes pretty descent looking pictures with only the size 32x32 and 256 colors ?
I spent a lot of hours today trying to create a new icon for a piece of software I am developing. When I look at some icons companies like M$ create I am simply amazed.

Let me show you what I came up with after some time. The leftmost is the current icon I use (it is from the Hemera CD that came with CorelXara 2 from i/us so nothing I created at all). For the next version I would like a new icon. Any feedback would be appreciated.

One of the really naughty problems is that I need the same in 16x16 as well.

juergen

http://herling.com/pictures/no0815l.jpg

[ivca]

Here are 2 programs that create icons from palleted artwork. They're pretty straight forward too.
They have a trial download period.


Iconforge here.... www.cursorarts.com

Microangelo here .... http://www.impactsoft.com/products/products.htm

Hope this helps, Wayne

[Soquili]

Hi Juergen,

Wayne mentioned two of the popular programs for making icons. I tried both trial programs and then bought the Microangelo. The best results seem to be in designing an icon at the 64 x 64 maximum colour option. Then select copy to new format (32 x 32). This retains the original colours and detail. You can then copy the 32 x 32 to a 16 x 16 size and get something that can then be hand edited to resemble the original. The best 16 x 16 images are created by selecting a 16 x 16 pixel portion of the 32 x 32 icon.

Soquili [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[stlewis]

You can create icons in XaraX too! Create the image and then export down to BMP at the desired size.

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[Mickie]

There is also Sean Sedwards BMP2ICO program in the Xaraxone Shareware area.

I too have recently been working on icons and designing down to 16x16 is a *****. Anyone have any tips for designing something that is actually recognizable at that size?

Mickie

"My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance."

[juergen]

for the feedback.

Microangelo seems to be a pretty sophisticated package.

Simon: thats what I do right now. I design the pictures in Xara, export to .bmp and change them to .ico files inside my development package.

Mickie: that my biggest problem here as well which probably wont be resolved by ANY software sufficiently.

juergen

[Peter Clifton]

Hello People

I've recently been looking into icons, simply because I spotted someone at work had changed the default Windows 95/98 icons to either Mac OSX or Windows XP ones.

It is hard to describe how the simple act of changing something you have stared at for the last years makes the OS feel. Anyway I digress as usual.

In the 32x32 icons sometimes there is a nice surround to the focal point of the icon (example the document around the W for Word Icons). In the 16x16 the surround is gone leaving just the focal point, the W.

In some cases this might be the best way to tackle the problem. Use the Big Icon to define what is meant and the 16x16 icon as reference to the big icon.

Peter

[Sean Sedwards]

Don't forget that BMP-2-ICO allows you to create bitmap copies in X and paste them without actually creating a bmp file.

Following a specific request, I've recently created a version which stays on top and is extra compatible with NT4. I'm happy to make it available in the Shareware Xone if anybody's interested. Please let me know.

I don't think there's an easy way of getting 16 x 16 icons to look right. It's probably best to start by exporting a bitmap (copy) from X, but it's usually possible to improve the appearance by hand tweaking in a pixel app. X's anti-aliasing can make the image too diffuse, so it might be better to turn it off for this size.

Don't forget that a 24-bit 16 x 16 icon is 894 bytes, 512 bytes _smaller_ than an 8-bit version (1406 bytes). You might be able to get away with a 4-bit icon at this size (just 318 bytes), remembering that you don't have to limit yourself to the system colours, as some programs make you.

Regards - Sean

[jens g.r. benthien]

...to a Win NT 4 version.

Sean, I tried your BMP-2-ICO app, but it always crashed in NT - I never could figure out the reason. Sooooo, if you have a version for NT and W2K, I would love to have it.

Thanx in advance,

jens