Since very few desktop projects are involved, and most of the cute siege lions opt for their own components and ICONS, there has never been a deep dive into the features of icO-format images. This time, however, I came across a project that needed to use a custom ICO icon, and since this format was rarely used in previous scenarios, IT was naive to assume that icOs of the same style but different sizes were generated directly from PNG (or other formats) of the corresponding size. In order to have a good visual effect in different scenarios, I made 256*256, 128* 128,96 * 96,64 * 64,32 * 32,16 *16, and gave them to the developers in a big way. The developers were told to choose only one size, and although the maximum size was 256*256, the compiled results were not good. Illustrated above.

Select large ICONS

One =N ICO format

Come on, not afraid of problems, every pit encountered is the way to advance, check the information, experiment, finally solved the program to adapt to the ico of different sizes, here to share, have the need to do desktop projects (Windows or OS or) partners have the need to take it.

Take a look at wikipedia’s explanation of the ICO format:

An icon file can contain multiple formats, so it is possible to display completely different patterns in different file views. These formats can be compressed to save storage space. When an icon is displayed, the system automatically selects a display from the closest format based on the size to be displayed and the current system color depth.

Well, we clearly get a basic concept as follows:

An ICO icon file can contain many groups of ICONS, which can be a collection rather than a single size icon.

This is very different from our usual most common bitmap, as we all know, bitmap size is unique, and the magic ICO tells us that it is not a person in the fight! It’s a collection of friends. Professional pictures naturally to professional tools to complete, here recommended an ICOFX. There’s also greenfish Icon Editor, both of which are free (the former has a 30-day trial, but cracked versions are available online). Since this is not a software comparison, I will just say that I use ICOFX. First of all, as a professional icon design software, in addition to Windows ICONS, Mac ICONS, mouse Cursor (including dynamic effects), ICOFX also provides very powerful design functions, you can directly design on the canvas, including graphic creation and a variety of layer effects. However, for the majority of non-professional icon designer partners, there is no need to spend too much energy to learn a new software, so here is only the function used.

Create a collection of ICO images from existing images

In this case, we only need one function, extremely simple “Windows Icon from Image”, to create Windows ICONS from images. Now you are ready to import the ICONS we made with any of the other drawing tools.

???? Finished ？？？？ Yes, all you need is to understand the particularity of Icon and a professional software, that’s all. Most of the time, the desktop developer will have the knowledge to work with the images once they’re delivered, but every once in a while, I mean every once in a while, as a designer, you have to have the expertise to deal with it. Interaction design, UI design, perhaps the most important is not only technology, but also the ability to solve problems.