Afternoon all

I've created a load of icons (vector-based in Illustrator) and I now need to convert them to .ico files. Its a weird format as it embeds a number of different digital images of different sizes and resolutions within a single file.

I've googled it and tried a couple of the free downloads, and frankly… they're bobbins. Does anyone know if there's decent software out there to do this.

Any advice gratefully received

Cheers

I believe they are just .bmp files renamed… although I could be wrong.

I believe they are just .bmp files renamed

no

I was working on the same principle. But being microsoft-based they're much more horrible than that. They embed a number of size formats in the same file.

Care to enlarge on your one word answer Mr B? 🙂

Care to enlarge on your one word answer Mr B?

no, they are not BMP files renamed.

I use MS Visual Studio to create them and have no idea what the file format is like, but visual inspection shows it's different to .bmp

how about this ?

Yeah…had a look at that and a couple of other similar programmes, but they're PC only and not Mac. God knows why. I'd assume most artwork is produced on Macs

And I can't touch a PC as I'd become infected and my fingers would melt

If you are using Photoshop you should be able to find a free plugin that enables you to save files in .ico format. Max size for .ico is 256 x 256 pixels.

Yeah…had a look at that and a couple of other similar programmes, but they're PC only and not Mac. God knows why. I'd assume most artwork is produced on Macs

I wonder why there's no Widnows creating icon software for Mac, what a mystery.

And I can't touch a PC as I'd become infected and my fingers would melt

get a common person to do it for you

Wow – are we hearing this correctly? There's something a Mac can't do? I'm stunned. My world has just fallen apart….. 😆

gimp will save them, although I'm not sure how it handles multiple sizes (I think it just saves one size.

For icons to look good at smaller sizes you really need to create them properly in an icon editor with the multiple sizes – those kind of 'take a bitmap and zoom it down' editors create rubbish looking icons when they are small (although being a mac person, I guess you'll be used to application icons looking a bit fuzzy, as display of icons & fonts on macs is generally that bit fuzzier than windows*).

Joe

*there is a good technical reason for macs doing it this way though

use this:

http://www.favicon.co.uk/ quick and online

and as above gimp will do it