retiredmaster

Join Date 03/2001

+85

Tips for making small icons

Maybe some of you expert fellas could help me on this.

I'm putting together my first icon pack and I created my designs in a vector art package. I resized the vectors from the original (which I made at 128x128) down through the various sizes to 16x16. In the vector prog they still look fine at that size, but my exported 16x16 pngs look decidedly jaggy.

What techniques could I use to make sure that my smallest icons look legible?

icons

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BoXXi

Join Date 03/2001

+393

Hi Tim, have you tried letting IconDeveloper do the resizing for you? Your icons look like they would resize well using that method. (Unlike mine....hehe). I was told to use the Lancosz3 setting in IconDeveloper to get the best results. If you put all your 128x128 PNG's in one folder, you can use batch processing in IconDeveloper to convert them all to icon format and choose the sizes you want too.
(File>Batch Processing>Create icons from images in a folder) then you can open the folder with the finished icons in it and drag and drop them into IconPackager. That's the best I can offer Tim, hope it helps. And the icons look great!!

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retiredmaster

Join Date 03/2001

+85

I'll give that a try and see how it compares to making individual sized pngs.

My method has been to make a vector image at each of the 8 different sizes, then export them each to 24-bit png with an alpha channel, then create the icon from the pngs.

Thanks Boxxi

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retiredmaster

Join Date 03/2001

+85

That seem to give better results. Good idea Boxxi - it'll same a lot of time. I'm going to use the 96x96 png to base the smaller icons on. Nice. Looks like my package might be ready earlier than I expected!

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Island Dog

Join Date 06/2003

+1048

Looks great so far. Can't wait to see it finished.

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small icons are tricky. It might be a good idea to simplify the original image for the small version. Another thing that could help with the edges is a drop shadow effect. And finally, a resampling algorithm that respect gamma correction would give you better results.

This image demonstrates some of these techniques, but the quality is not 100%, cause it was only based on the small image above.
One more thing - use the entire 16x16 space, do not waste those precious pixels

.

---> RealWorld Icon Editor can help you with many of these tricks.

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One of Brad's articles a long while back had a discussion with a guy who did vector.

He said one of the things he did was zoom out, then use Irfanview (or other) to take a screenshot then crop it out

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Ive got a question, i created an icon i wanted to use for "my pictures" its sized at 255 x 255 and when i create the icon in icon developer it comes out crappy looking and isnt clear like the ones i download off of here, any suggestions?

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