.png icon editor

coolcoyote

Beginner

Posts: 4

Location: Seattle, WA

Occupation: Software Engineer

1

Thursday, April 21st 2005, 6:39am

Can someone recommend a good little .png editor for creating icons.

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anda_skoa

Master

Posts: 2,162

Location: Graz, Austria

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2

Thursday, April 21st 2005, 10:15am

Which platform/operating system?

Cheers,
_

Qt/KDE Developer
Debian User

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coolcoyote

Beginner

Posts: 4

Location: Seattle, WA

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3

Thursday, April 21st 2005, 4:16pm

Initially I will be working on Windows XP then I will be moving to Linux, probably the Debian distro.

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Everall

Intermediate

Posts: 335

4

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 7:43am

Use the Gimp!

It's in a debian package :
apt-get install gimp
apt-get install gimp-help-en (or choose your own language)

You can use it on windows too :
http://www.gimp.org/windows/

Have fun!

Everall

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wysota

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Location: Warsaw, POLAND

5

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 7:44am

Don't you think gimp is too heavy to just edit icons?

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Everall

Intermediate

Posts: 335

6

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 8:17am

Hello Wysota,

I'm using the gimp for making icons and i' m not a gimp guru.

To be honest i started with sodipodi using the following tutorial.
http://www.linuxcult.com/?m=show&id=272
Sodipodi is great, but i prefer to use the Gimp because it has more functionality (which I might need in the future)
As far as I know iSodipodi is not available on windows.

After a little experimenting with the Gimp, I could do the same things.
www.gimp.org has nice tutorials.
The best tutorial I found is this one :
http://www.bartendavid.be/doc/howto/gimp/crystalbal.html (it's in Dutch)

The Gimp is the only one I know, that can be used on windows and linux. It looks like overkill at first if you only want to make icons, but the advantage is you can start simple and grow using the same software on different operating systems.

Everall

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wysota

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Location: Warsaw, POLAND

7

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 8:33am

It's hard to get going if someone isn't used to its interface. Moreover it is like shooting a sparrow from an elephant gun. Noone said it had to be the same app for both windows and linux. You can create .ico icons on windows and then convert them to png or vice versa. You can make icons with an editor of your choice and then convert the resulting image to png (if you don't have a program for it, use Qt

).

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Everall

Intermediate

Posts: 335

8

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 8:55am

Quoted

You can make icons with an editor of your choice

What png-editor program are you suggesting to coolcoyote on windows,
and for his future plans on Debian?

Everall

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wysota

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9

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 10:15am

I suggest http://google.com with search for "icon editor" and for example image magick for converting to png. I thought of suggesting gimp before you did, but then I realized that it is to heavy for just icon editing. GIMP has many features, it's a great program and I often use it, but I wouldn't suggest it as an icon editor, you need to click too much to get simple effects

BTW. One can write his own icon editor in Qt

I bet it would take less time than learning GIMP for icon editing

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Everall

Intermediate

Posts: 335

10

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 10:58am

Quoted

I bet it would take less time than learning GIMP for icon editing

OK, I take the bet

I learned it in half a day using the already mentioned tutorial.

Quoted

you need to click too much to get simple effects

You're right about this. But once you've set it up, you can make series of analog icons just by hiding/unhiding layers and so saving a lot of clicks. That's why I like it so much.

By the way: thanks for the many answers in this forum.

Everall

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wysota

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Location: Warsaw, POLAND

11

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 11:50am

Quoted

Originally posted by Everall

Quoted

I bet it would take less time than learning GIMP for icon editing

OK, I take the bet

You'd lose it, there is a (simple) example of an icon editor somewhere -- one you can make in a quarter of an hour

Quoted

By the way: thanks for the many answers in this forum.

You're welcome.

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coolcoyote

Beginner

Posts: 4

Location: Seattle, WA

Occupation: Software Engineer

12

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 6:01pm

I appreciate your interest and your inputs. I will have a look at the GIMP. It does sound a bit heavy but I will have a look.

There are many windows icon editor programs out there but I have not yet found one that outputs png. I thought for sure that there would be a lightweight program that runs on both platforms. If you don't have an art department behind you, then creating icons is a necessary part of UI development work. Having something lightweight that works directly on both platforms would be ideal.

thanks again for your interest.

)

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wysota

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Location: Warsaw, POLAND

13

Friday, April 22nd 2005, 6:26pm

It doesn't have to output PNG. You can convert between formats.

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mhoover

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Posts: 91

Location: Maui, HI

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14

Saturday, April 23rd 2005, 12:05am

Is there a simple way of running GIMP on OS X.2 ?

If OS X is posix-based, it seems like it wouldn't be too hard.

I use GIMP all the time at work, but it would be nice to have it at home also.

-Micah

Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself in what he approves.
Paul

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coolcoyote

Beginner

Posts: 4

Location: Seattle, WA

Occupation: Software Engineer

15

Tuesday, April 26th 2005, 3:20pm

Just to wrap this up, I found a Windows shareware icon editor that could import and export png but was unable to locate a cross platform icon editor.

Perhaps someone will take this up as an open source project.

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guest

Unregistered

16

Sunday, May 1st 2005, 7:02am

gimp runs in windows and linux. I can't swear to it but I suspect it runs on Mac's too.

About the overkill...I'm not a graphics artist, but I've come to appreciate when I need something special in web devel work (especially in PNG's) that gimp isn't too hard and can do so much. If he has a png to start with it's so easy to alter it. Creating something from scratch is most of the pain, as it isn't a vector graphics tool. Cross-platform vector graphics is a problem.