There are several websites offering an online web service, one that I have used recently to create the “Favicon” for this website is at RealWorld Graphics. This is a quick way of creating a basic icon (*.ico) file. You can select colours and draw your own icon of you can upload a picture for it to interpret into an icon. I am not saying that this is the best available website for icon creation, but I have tried a couple of others and I found this one easy to use and smooth in its operation. (Any suggestions for better web based applications will be gratefully received in the comments!)

Summary:

• Draw Icon with your mouse
• Select colours from an extensive palette
• Upload a file to convert to an icon
• Save finished icon to your PC

rw-designer.com has this to say:

How to use it:

• Select one of basic colors by clicking on a color square on the right side of the window.
• Erase pixels by drawing with transparent color (checkboard) or erase the entire canvas by clicking the Clear Canvas toolbar button.
• Select a custom color by typing its hexadecimal web color code to the box under the default colors and click the ‘Set’ button
• Choose drawing tool by clicking a button in the toolbar:
  • “Pencil” is changing colors of pixels when a mouse is moving over the canvas while the left button is pressed.
  • “Lines” draws a line from the point where the mouse button was pressed to the point where it was released.
  • “Dropper” allows to set current color from an icon’s pixel.
• Create favicon from a jpg or png picture using the box under the editor window. (Alpha channel is not supported.)
• Download your new icon by simply clicking the ‘Download Icon’ button in the toolbar.

They also point to resources to modify your web page to display favicons and link to an icon library.

Also a note of caution on browser requirements is given:

Important: This online icon maker requires a web browser with Javascript 1.2 support such as Internet Explorer 6, Firefox, or Opera. If you are experiencing problems, make sure that you are using one of the supported browsers and Javascript (“Active content”) is enabled.

Pros: What’s Good?

• Simple and intuitive to use
• Free

Cons: What’s Not So Good?

• Can’t convert an existing icon (*.ico) file

I should also point out that this is not a sophisticated icon creation tool and as a free offering it is a way to entice the user to buy their “more professional” tool. However if you just need a quick, simple and effective way of creating a basic icon by drawing or from your own picture this certainly does the job.

Why Would You Want It?

1. To produce a quick favicon for a website
2. To make an icon to use with a program shortcut on your desktop or in quicklaunch
3. To quickly convert an existing picture to a useable icon

More About What it Does in Detail:

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

As the screenshot shows there is a drawing canvas on the left and a palette of colours on the right. There are two basic drawing tools “Pencil” and “Lines”.

• Pencil – will fill in individual pixels and can also be dragged (and moved around) to fill in multiple pixels.
• Lines – draws a line in the selected colour from the starting pixel to the end pixel. Holding the left mouse button down means you can move the end point around and the line is drawn when it is released.
• The “Dropper” tool will select the colour of a pixel already on the canvas.
• The “Download Icon” button selects the browser dialogs for saving the file to your PC.

Below the drawing area is a box to select a local PC based picture file to upload and convert to an icon.

I tried this out on a previously created icon I had made for this blog. At this point I discovered that this feature does not work with *.ico files (nothing said on the website to this effect). So I converted the icon file to a jpeg using the excellent IrfanView utility and uploaded this.

This is the original screenshot of the icon created on the website.

(The conversion to jpeg looks identical so I have not shown it here)

and this is the screenshot on the website of the same icon converted to jpeg and then uploaded to be converted back to an icon.

What is the My Free Review Experience?

I found the site easy to use and thought the results were very acceptable for a free utility.

All in all not bad!

What Other Posts are Relevant?

Why I Decided to Write this Blog

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Technorati Tags: Freeware, Open Source, Utility, Windows XP, Windows Explorer, Web Application, Web Utility, Icon

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