Create your first icon

Windows and Macintosh icons

Using IcoFX you can create icons for the Windows operating system and also for the Macintosh operating system. IcoFX allows you to draw your own icons. Using many drawing tools and more than 40 effects you can draw your icons easily.

An icon file contains multiple images of different size and format. The operating system will automatically choose the appropriate image to display.

Create the image

To create an icon using IcoFX follow these steps:

1. Start IcoFX.

2. Create a new empty image using the "File/New image..." menu item.

3. On the New Image dialog select the size 256x256 and the data type True Color + Alpha channel

4. Draw your icon.

Create the icon from the image

5. Your image contains only one image format. Use the "Icon/Create Windows Icon From Image..." menu item to create an icon from the image and add all the needed image formats to the icon. The default settings on this dialog will do in most cases.

Use the "Icon/Create Macintosh Icon From Image..." menu item if you would like to create a Macintosh icon.

6. If you would like to create Windows Vista compatible icons with PNG compression then make sure that there is a 256x256 sized image in your icon and that the "Options/Preferences/Options/Compress 256x256 images for Windows Vista" option is checked.

7. Save the icon using the "File/Save As..." menu item. On the save dialog choose the desired output format in the "Save as type" combo box.

For more information about the New Image or Create Windows Icon dialog consult the help file of IcoFX.