8

What is the best way to create an icon for an application?

From Visual Studio or maybe some another program.

I create an icon in Visual Studio and use it as application icon, but when I put the icon shortcut on the desktop there is only some gray icon. Is this maybe because of icon dimensions or something else?

Peter Mortensen
  • 30,738
  • 21
  • 105
  • 131
tanasi
  • 1,804
  • 6
  • 37
  • 53
  • 4
    I don't agree with closing this question. The creation of an icon for your application isn't strictly a programming question but it is very closely associated and ought to be trivial. However, I also find the path to acheiving this to be rather unclear and I always need to remind myself how to acheive it properly each time I need to do it. – Adam Ralph Jan 09 '11 at 12:29
  • It depends on what "creating an icon" refers to: the association of an icon with the application binaries, or the design process of the icon itself. I didn't vote to close but I consider the latter off-topic. – BoltClock Jan 09 '11 at 12:31

7 Answers7

8

You simply can't beat IcoFX for the price and feature set.
It's one of my favorite programs, and it makes icon design incredibly easy. If you've been using MS Paint or the icon editor built into Visual Studio, you owe it to yourself to download IcoFX and give it a try.

Adobe Photoshop is the 300 pound gorilla here, but I think everyone who knows (or is willing to learn) how to use Photoshop already knows that.

But really, it might be the case that we developers are fooling ourselves if we think we're icon designers. Aside from a few specialized cases where you can't find the icon you need, you owe it to your users to use an existing icon library. Seriously, even with the best tools, could you design these? I didn't think so.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Cody Gray - on strike
  • 239,200
  • 50
  • 490
  • 574
6

The best image programs are the Adobe products. However, Paint.NET is a good free tool (see Create .ico files with Paint.NET).

In the project properties application tab in the Resources grouping, add the icon file to the Icon and Manifest section.

Peter Mortensen
  • 30,738
  • 21
  • 105
  • 131
PMC
  • 4,698
  • 3
  • 37
  • 57
4

If you have no artistic skills, you should look at Iconfu. You can simply select a base icon and apply custom styles and colors to the icon.

Waruyama
  • 3,267
  • 1
  • 32
  • 42
2

Here in our office, my co-worker uses Microangelo Icon Editor. He is a screen designer, so I assume he knows what he is doing.

Being a programmer, I would never ever dare to create icons on my own. I do not have the graphical skills. Usually I rely on third-party libraries like Icon Experience.

Peter Mortensen
  • 30,738
  • 21
  • 105
  • 131
Uwe Keim
  • 39,551
  • 56
  • 175
  • 291
1

I've also created some nice ones with AWIcons Pro which has a free trial.

SoftDeveloper
  • 160
  • 1
  • 8
1

See Make an ICO file in 30 seconds (YouTube video) and http://converticon.com/.

Peter Mortensen
  • 30,738
  • 21
  • 105
  • 131
evilReiko
  • 19,501
  • 24
  • 86
  • 102
1

If you like using Photoshop, there are many free icon export tools available, which is what I use personally

Kurru
  • 14,180
  • 18
  • 64
  • 84