Files Library and Iconforge Icon Editing Tool Kit Software for Windows

IconForge Icon Editing Tool Kit
$37.95 - CursorArts Company

A complete graphics suite for creating, extracting, and modifying icons, cursors, animated icons or cursors and other images. Use for creating bookmark and favorites icons for your web pages, filmstrip animation sequences, stitching together panels of icons, and editing other images.

A PARTIAL LISTING OF FEATURES INCLUDES:
* A full set of painting tools;
* Transparent and Inverse paint;
* Extract icons and cursors from EXE, DLL, ICO, ANI, ICL, or CUR format files (including OS2, XP Alpha-channel icons and cursors, XBM, XPM, WBMP and Palm Datebook icon files);
* Read/write most common image files (such as BMP, JPEG, GIF, PCX, TIFF, etc.);
* Capture icons from the screen;
* Clip and/or scale on import;
* Save in icon/cursor formats, store in Library files;
* Insert icons into program files (including EXE, DLL, VBX, OCX, CPL and DRV);
* Special Effects filters (including User Defined and PS-style plugins);
* Automatic creation of common animation effects, such as Dissolves and Fades;
* Import/export animated GIF, FLC, FLI and AVI files;
* Export animations as .BMP filmstrip panels;
* Icon Wrapper utility allows you to wrap programs and scripts which do not contain icon resources into an executable with your own icon;
* Change system icons/cursors (including animation of desktop icons);
* Allows you to create and distribute icon and cursor library EXE programs, complete with installation program, image preview applet, and other options;
* Can also edit photos and larger images;
* Support for TWAIN scanners and cameras;
* Support for pressure-sensitive Stylus and Tablet devices;
* and much more...

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IconUtils
$59.95 - Aha-soft

Usability and functionality were our Polestar, while we were developing the new version of IconUtils. IconUtils is a complete workshop for icon crafting. The suite consists of several programs; each was designed to process icons in its special way: IconLover is an icon, cursor, image editor and manager; Any to Icon is a converter for converting graphic format files to icons; Icon to Any is a converter for converting icons to various formats of graphic files; AhaView is a handy picture viewer and converter. Downloading huge collections of icons from the Internet and creating icons, cursors, gif-buttons and toolbars will be a piece of cake.

IconLover has a good hand at finding, extracting icons and cursors, creating and editing icons and cursors, importing and exporting icons and cursors and managing icon and cursor libraries. IconLover is fitted out with different paint tools, including enhanced gradient fills, which allow you to process images with color depths up to 32-bit True Color. The new version has the following novelties: support for Windows Vista icons, ability to draw smooth lines and shapes, ability to print icon images, brightness, contrast, smooth and sharpness effects, new color palette. You can convert images to cursors and import cursors from icon and library files and from executables.

Any to Icon and Icon to Any are two smart image converters, which virtually efface format distinctions and make your work with images a child's play. BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF, ICO, CUR, WBMP, PSD, XPM, XBM are main supported formats. The converters have a wizard style interface, which makes it simple to process multiple files at a time. AhaView is another vital part of IconUtils. It supports all popular graphic formats, helps you to browse images in the thumbnail mode, view pictures full screen with zooming features, convert images and manage files. IconUtils has all you need to express your artistic nature and create your own unique icons.

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Icon Craft
$49.95 - Icon Empire

Icon Craft gives professional and amateur artists the ability to design and edit all the graphics required in the software development cycle, including icons, static and animated cursors, and other interface elements. All these graphics can now be designed using a single application.

Icon Craft offers a variety of features that cannot be found in standard graphics applications. Icon Craft includes the ability to import icons from executables, image and library files. The built-in search and extract function enables busy artists to scan through the contents of a folder or a drive and arrange all images found in any files into a single icon library for easy and effective management.

This program features a greatly improved image editor that offers graphic artists a number of breakthrough features, including the ability to create icons with several raster layers. Layers give you more freedom in using complex graphic tools and creating professional images. This new feature enables Icon Craft to rival any high-end graphics package. In fact, when considering icon creation, Icon Craft is already at the top of the list.

Icon Craft is supplied with all the essential drawing tools, including various kinds of airbrushes, pencils and paintbrushes, as well as miscellaneous text, line and shape tools. The software is well equipped in the effects department too and offers a variety of solid, patterned and gradient flood fills, drop shadow, smooth, color modification and other effects. The native support for the Windows XP icon format enables artists to create 32-bit icons. Icon Craft also includes a number of unique features, such as the ability to apply effects to multiple images in the icon collection.

Other new features in Icon Craft include the support for large images, the ability to export and import transparent PNG images, the ability to export all images from a library to a single 32-bit image and an improved interface.

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IconEmpire
$29.95 - Icon Empire

IconEmpire gives professional and amateur artists the ability to design and edit all the graphics required in the software development cycle, including icons, static and animated cursors, and other interface elements. All these graphics can now be designed using a single application.

IconEmpire offers a variety of features that cannot be found in standard graphics applications. IconEmpire includes the ability to import icons from executables, image and library files. The built-in search and extract function enables busy artists to scan through the contents of a folder or a drive and arrange all images found in any files into a single icon library for easy and effective management.

This program features a greatly improved image editor that offers graphic artists a number of breakthrough features, including the ability to create icons with several raster layers. Layers give you more freedom in using complex graphic tools and creating professional images. This new feature enables IconEmpire to rival any high-end graphics package. In fact, when considering icon creation, IconEmpire is already at the top of the list.

IconEmpire is supplied with all the essential drawing tools, including various kinds of airbrushes, pencils and paintbrushes, as well as miscellaneous text, line and shape tools. The software is well equipped in the effects department too and offers a variety of solid, patterned and gradient flood fills, drop shadow, smooth, color modification and other effects. The native support for the Windows XP icon format enables artists to create 32-bit icons. IconEmpire also includes a number of unique features, such as the ability to apply effects to multiple images in the icon collection.

Other new features in IconEmpire include the support for large images, the ability to export and import transparent PNG images, the ability to export all images from a library to a single 32-bit image and an improved interface.

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AZ Icon Editor
$30 - Herman Compute

AZ Icon Editor, also known as Icon Editor, is a full-featured and powerful Icon Editor for creating and editing icons of any size and color depth, as well as Windows static or animated cursors. The program provides all the icon/cursor drawing tools and a variety of advanced image manipulation functions, with an extremely efficient arrangement. (In addition, supplementary programs are available for registered users, free of charge, to cater to other special needs, e.g. to convert file formats, to replace an icon in an exe file, or to create library files, etc.)

Acclaimed as one of the best icon editors around for its reliability, versatility and richness of functions, this application has a comprehensive coverage of icon utilities. Its basic features include lining up several icons for edit at any one time, automating creation of different effects, optionally saving to single or multi-icon files, extracting icons from dll or similar resources, converting bmp/gif/jpg/wmf/emf/png/tiff etc images to icons, adding solid or hollow text at any angle, creating animated cursor files or obtaining icons from them, revealing specific alpha values of individual pixels of Windows XP and Vista icons, editing them or converting them for use in both XP/Vista and non-XP/Vista systems, etc.

Currently there are corporate and individual registered users in over 30 countries.

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ArtIcons
$29.95 - Aha-soft

ArtIcons provides great opportunities for working with Windows XP and Windows Vista icons. You will be able to handle Vista Icons with ease. In order to make Vista icons compatible with Windows XP you can save them without any compression.

Vista Icons introduce a new style of iconography that brings a higher level of detail and sophistication to Windows imagery. First, the style of Windows Aero-style icons is more realistic than illustrative, but not quite photorealistic. The icons are symbolic images - they should look better than photorealistic. Second, icons have a maximum size of 256 x 256, making them suitable for high-DPI displays. These high-resolution icons allow for high visual quality in list views with large icons. Finally, wherever practical, fixed document icons are replaced by thumbnails of the content, making documents easier to identify and find. Thus, ArtIcons is a beeline to refining the visuals of your program and making it more communicative for users.

A picture of a maximum size of 256 x 256 to be used as an icon, in principle, is supported by XP, yet such an icon occupies 400Kb of disk space, which is far more than standard 25Kb of an XP icon. Aha-Soft has again found a way to cast off these shackles: ArtIcons uses advanced PNG compression to save images without losses and supports semitransparent images with 8bit alpha channel. That technology reduces the size of an icon only, leaving the quality invariable.

ArtIcons will help you to obtain the modern Windows Vista look. All you need is just to redesign your program's most prominent icons to use the Aero-style. From this time onwards Vista Icons crafted by ArtIcons will strongly impact users' overall impression of your programs' visual design. ArtIcons will improve the usability of your software by making programs, objects, and actions easier to identify and find.

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