6

Possible Duplicate:
Which icon sizes should my windows application’s icon include?

I'm working on a C# program. I set the applications icon via Project Properties -> Application -> Icon & Manifest.

The icon looks really bad when a shortcut to the executable is created on the desktop, but if I make a shortcut to the same exact .ico file that is in the project's directory it looks fine.

enter image description here

Any ideas why this is occurring and how I can fix it?

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Salis
  • 433
  • 1
  • 8
  • 15

1 Answers1

0

If you are working under Win environment, you have to know that Windows XP uses 16x16, 32x32, 48x48 icon sizes, while Windows Vista and greater versions also use 256x256 icons. All other sizes being normally ignored, you should use a program like Photoshop (with the proper Ico extension format) to build the icon on every possible used size. Probably, it looks bad because the OS doesn't find a greater resolution in the Ico file or badly resizes a larger one.

For more infos: here!

Tommaso Belluzzo
  • 23,232
  • 8
  • 74
  • 98
  • It's 256x256 only, so Windows is resizing it down to the necessary size. I could imagine that's the source of the issue.. except if I make a shortcut to the icon directly it looks great, but if I make a shortcut to the executable it looks terrible. I don't understand why there would be a difference between the two since it's the same icon – Salis Jan 14 '13 at 01:59