IcoFX -- Powerful Freeware Icon Editor
About a year ago, I reviewed SnIco Edit here at Software Gadgets. It was a nice little icon editor, however, its web site has disappeared and I've recently found an icon editor I like much better: IcoFX.
From the IcoFX web site:
IcoFX is an award winning freeware icon editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. It is designed to work with Windows XP and Windows Vista icons supporting transparency.
With a wealth of tools and more than 40 effects at your fingertips, there’s virtually no limit to the icons you can create. You can convert your favorite images into icons, or icons into images. With IcoFX you can extract icons from other files, including Windows Vista files. You can easily work with multiple files using the batch processing capability of IcoFX.
It has a large number of features, including many found only in the more expensive commercial icon editor programs:
* Support for Vista icons with PNG compression
* Create icons for Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP / Vista
* Support for alpha channel
* Batch processing
* More than 40 effects, including Drop Shadow
* Create custom filters
* Multiple language support (Available translations: Catalan, English, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian and Spanish)
* Resolutions up to 256x256
* Data types: 2, 16, 256, True Color, True Color + Alpha
* Extract icons (including Vista icons) from 32 bit exe and dll
* Import / export images (transparency also)
* Many useful drawing tools like brush, line, rectangle and more
* Transparent, Brighten/Darken, Blur/Sharpen tools for retouching
* Create icon from an image with a single click
* Adjust the contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, transparency and color balance of icons
* Change the dimension of images
* Images can be faded using the fadeout dialog
* Increase / decrease the opacity of an image
* Easy shadow handling
* RGB and HSB color modes
* History of recently opened files
* Window menu for easy window switching
* Possibility to store favorite colors
* Capture image from the desktop
* Grid for precision work
* Side bar for easy image switching
* File Explorer window for easy import
* Full drag and drop support
* Sizable preview window
* Multiple undo
* Blur the edge of the brush
* Rotate the image at any angle
Best of all, IcoFX just works -- unlike several other freeware icon editors I have recently tried which could not handle the simple task of extracting an icon from an executable file and letting me clean up the alpha-blending so I could have an icon that looked better on an old button bar program.
Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows 98/ME/2K/XP/Vista
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version: 1.5
Web Site: http://icofx.xhost.ro/
Tags: windows, freeware, icon editor, icofx
