Themes Fonts Screensavers Wallpaper Icons Games Reviews Support Top50
Site Search

Home: Icon Library: User Manual


Application Notes 4


Section Contents

Deriving Your Own Icons
You can create your own icons starting with the ones in Icon Library. Since Icon Library does not have editing features, you will need an icon editing program such as MicroAngelo. Of course, you can create your icons from scratch, but it is often easier to have an image to start from.

  1. You want to use one of the icons in Icon Library but it has the wrong color. Extract the icon from Icon Library, for example the first arrow icon in the Abstract>Arrows and Pointers>Buttons category, and save it in your c:\icons folder.

    Find Arrow Icon

  2. The saved icon, example.ico should now appear in the c:\icons folder.

    Extracted Icon

  3. Open this icon using MicroAngelo or your favourite icon editing tool. This demonstration uses MicroAngelo.

    MicroAngelo Before

  4. Using the palette tool, change the color of the arrow.

    MicroAngelo After

  5. Save the new icon using a different name, for example, example_r.ico. While you have MicroAngelo open, you can color and save several more icons.

    New Icons

  6. Here is another example. You have found a paintbrush icon that is almost what you want but the icon has to be reflected horizontally, have a drop shadow removed, and a color changed. This is the icon from the Icon Library collection that you extract into the c:\icons folder.

    Icon Library Brush

  7. Open this icon using MicroAngelo.

    MicroAngelo Brush

  8. Using various MicroAngelo tools, remove the drop shadow, change the color of the paint on the brush, and flip the image horizontally.

    Modified Brush Icon

  9. After saving the result as a new image, here are your two icons in the c:\icons folder. This new icon took less than a minute to create. Trying to draw it from scratch would probably have taken much longer. Icon Library has a collection of more than 20,000 icons, many of which can be used as a starting point for your own creations.

    Two Brush Icons

  10. There are many other manipulations you can make to icons such as drawing extra objects into the icon, removing objects from the icon, rotating the icon, shifting the image within the image space, or changing the shape of an image within the icon. If you use MicroAngelo, you can manipulate icons of all sizes and color depths.

  11. You can save icons as bitmaps for use in web pages and other graphics applications.

Danworld Network
© 1996- Danworld, Inc.