Content

General

• Overview
• Main Features
• Tutorials

Concepts

• Icons
• Data Types

User Interface

• Main Window
• Colors
• Preview
• File Explorer
• Main Menu
• Toolbar
• Work Area
• Handling Selections
• Tools

Adjustment Dialogs

• Custom Filter
• Brightness / Contrast
• Hue / Saturation
• Color Balance
• Dimension
• Rotate
• Shadow
• Fadeout
• Opacity

Tool Dialogs

• Batch Process
• Resource Editor

Other Dialogs

• Preferences
• Properties
• Create Windows Icon
• Create Macintosh Icon
• Insert New Image
• Import Image
• Frames
• Extract
• Snapshot
• Tip Of The Day
• Download Languages

Other

• Troubleshooting

Icons

General

Icons are small images, which can be associated to file types, executables, to identify and recognize them easier. Double clicking an icon opens / executes the file. It helps to easily recognize files and applications. The difference between images and icons is that icons contain multiple images, and can also contain semitransparent images.

Structure

An icon contains more images in different size and format:

Each image can contain a transparent area. Windows chooses the file format needed from the icon. If the icon does not contain the given format, Windows chooses an appropriate one and resize it. This can result in image loss. The file format is chosen based on the screen settings, and the size is chosen depending where the icon is displayed:

Under Windows:

• 16x16: Displayed on the task bar, lists and headers
• 32x32: Displayed on the desktop, control panel
• 48x48: Displayed in Explorer when thumbnail or titles view is selected
• 256x256: Windows Vista® only

Under Macintosh:

• 16x16: Displayed on menus and lists
• 32x32: Displayed on the desktop and toolbars
• 48x48: Displayed on the desktop and windows
• 128x128: Displayed on the desktop and the dockbar

Image Formats

Image formats recommended for Windows icons:

The 256x256 formats are needed only for Windows Vista.

Image formats recommended for Macintosh icons:

Windows XP icons

With the introduction of XP the icon format changed, a new image format was placed inside the icon, a 32 bit image. This image format contains transparency information also known as alpha channel, or opacity. This allows that the background image can blend through the icon. With the help of this feature we can create shadow effects, semi transparent icons and more.

Windows Vista icons

With Windows Vista another standard icon size was introduced 256x256. This would result in big icon-file size, so images with the size 256x256 can be compressed using PNG compression, resulting in smaller file size

Macintosh icons

Macintosh icons are designed for Macintosh OSX operating system. The Macintosh icon file has a different file format than a Windows icon. IcoFX can handle Macintosh icons up to 256x256. Macintosh® OSX 10.4 Tiger introduced a new image size of 256x256. IcoFX can also handle the 256x256 format with JPEG2000 compression.

Macintosh® OSX 10.5 Leopard introduced a new image size of 512x512. IcoFX CANNOT handle this file format.

If you open a Macintosh icon that contain a 512x512 image with IcoFX and save it the 512x512 image will be lost!