Which icon resolutions should I use?

[c4s]

For my Windows applications I'm currently using an icon file which includes the actual icon in 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 pixels.
With Windows Vista the larger icons were introduced (128x128?) and - with Windows 8 coming soon - I guess I finally need to include higher resolutions. On MSDN I read that Windows can use up to 13 different resolutions: 8x8, 10x10, 14x14, 16, 22, 24, 32, 40, 48, 64, 96, 128 and 256. That's a lot to choose from and the icon file itself would probably get pretty big...

So my question is:
Which resolutions do you use / make sense / are recommended?
And: Do I need a special tool to create those 256x256 icons?

[Josh]

I think, for the toolbar you should store the icons in the size you offer in the toolbar. The icon for the application should stored in different sizes to be shown in the file explorer.

In my application the icon is stored with sizes 16x16, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256. Looks good, if you enlarge the icons in the file explorer (much more better than the small pb-icon ).

I'm using Greenfish Icon Editor Pro.

[c4s]

OK, so I'll probably 64x64 add 128x128 (and maybe 256x256)...

I don't want to add too many unnecessary resolutions because the .ico format is extremely unoptimized and can get pretty large. What size does your icon file have?

Does anyone know which resolutions are used most on modern Windows PCs with average user behavior?

[Inf0Byt3]

For icons, this is what I use for the executables:

• 16 x 16 (256 colors)
  32 x 32 (256 colors)
  48 x 48 (256 colors)
  64 x 64 (256 colors)
  128 x 128 (256 colors)
  16 x 16 (16.8mil colors)
  32 x 32 (16.8mil colors)
  48 x 48 (16.8mil colors)
  64 x 64 (16.8mil colors)
  128 x 128 (16.8mil colors)

The size of the final ico is a bit big, summing 129 KB (132,278 bytes). For editing, I use the last freeware version of IcoFX
(1.6.4, can be found on filehippo.com).

Regarding resolutions, this should be fairly accurate: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey (search on the page
for Primary Display Resolution and click to expand).

[c4s]

@Inf0Byt3
I've meant the icon resolution not the screen resolution. But thanks for the tip!

[Inf0Byt3]

Hehe what in the world was I thinking... Somehow seeing the word 'resolution' made me think of screen res . In any case, IcoFx made things easy for me, it's great for putting together an icon (even if that version is kind of old). For the actual drawing I use Gimp to first make a 128*128 pixels icon and then scale it down to cover the other resolutions as well.

[Danilo]

For the actual drawing I use Gimp to first make a 128*128 pixels icon and then scale it down to cover the other resolutions as well.

Vector drawing programs should be better suited for the scaling part.