Query on icons

[Foz]

When people are building their applications, I assume that you use icons for this rather than leaving it the dull default icon that is supplied by OS.

So, what do people use? Do you buy them or is there a free icon resource that people use?

I know of the Gnome Tango and KDE Crystal icon projects, and of course the Silk set that is bundled with PB, but those icons are very... specific, either tied to a particular app or function in an app.

So what do people use? Is there an abstract icon repository that you go to?

[codewalker]

This isn't really an issue. Do a google and you will find tons of free icons
and dozens of free icon editors or pic to icon convertors.
cw

[IdeasVacuum]

I draw my own using Serif DrawPlus http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/drawplus, or if I'm really lucky my daughter will draw them for me, she is an imaginative designer.

It's not so difficult to do, but many drawing/paint apps only save icons in single format or do not support it at all. IconCool http://www.iconcool.com is excellent for that task - you can import a picture file and define the exact icon formats required. You can draw the icons from scratch in IconCool but I find the interface a little bit awkward.

[Kaeru Gaman]

I do them all by myself.
I use PAINT if I want to pixel something, InkScape if I want VectorGrafix, PhotoFiltre when I manipulate Fotos and POV-Ray when I want raytraced objects.
sometimes I do not bother with good design and just minimize the main player sprite,
sometimes I sit around and create icons to drive away my boredom.

yap, saving as multipage format was the biggest problem for me.
thanks for the link to iconcool, I'll definitely check it out.
so far I always just converted them to a single-page ico with IrfanView.

[Thorium]

I use @icon sushi to make my icons. It's not a editor it's more a converter. It let's you specify and modify all aspects of icons. It supports different sizes of Icons in one .ico, alpha channel, icon size from 1x1 to 256x256, 1/4/8/24/32 bit color depth. Pretty much all you need. But no real editing, it just can edit the alpha channel or transparenzy mask. Anyway, for editing you should use a image editor not a icon editor.

[Vera]

@Thorium - thanks for the tip, that looks a neet programm

I like doing my own icons as well and also use different applications, depending on the what step I work on, and as main icon-app I take IconFx.

And I'd like to tell you about a littel helper I found lately: ToYcon (the author is french, but the app in english)
a drag&drop programm that converts a picture to an icon which you can preset in the options. (multilayer, 16/4bit to 256/32bit, incl. Vistacompression). If your sourcefile is of good quality you get good results.
I think it can be quite handy in some cases.

greetings ~ Vera