64 x 64 icons and VB6
C
Can I have 64 by 64 icons for VB 6 programs?
How can I make 64 x 64 icons? I have read that 256 colour bitmaps are
accepted as icons. Is there a better way? I need to draw six curves
for one icon.
Thank you for any replies.
Dee Earley
> On Windows 7, the old icons of VB6 look bad.
>
> Can I have 64 by 64 icons for VB 6 programs?
You can use any icon file, just take the 32x32, resize and tidy, that's
all that we would do.
OR, create your own application icon rather than using the default
fallback icon.
> How can I make 64 x 64 icons? I have read that 256 colour bitmaps are
> accepted as icons. Is there a better way? I need to draw six curves
> for one icon.
Any icon editor (I use visual studio)
--
Dee Earley (dee.e...@icode.co.uk)
i-Catcher Development Team
http://www.icode.co.uk/icatcher/
iCode Systems
(Replies direct to my email address will be ignored.
Please reply to the group.)
Mayayana
the content, and 1 or more icons. Each icon consists
of an image bitmap and a mask bitmap, which holds the
transparency information in the form of a 2-color bitmap
version of the image bitmap. (Black is transparent.)
So you can have any number of icons in a single ICO
file. They get stored in series, with the storage documented
in the header. You just need to pick a program to make
them with. Any decent icon editor will let you work on several
images for one ICO. But anything bigger than 48x48 is relatively
new. Truer color is also relatively new. You'll want to make
sure that the icons you create still look OK on the oldest
systems you plan to support. But you can also store
different color depths in a single ICO file. For instance,
most MS XP icons come as 16, 32 and 48 sizes, and in
16 and 256 color depths.
Personally I much prefer to create the images in a graphic
editor and then use something to create an ICO from that.
(I mostly use IrfnaView, creating 256-color 32x32 icons. I've
found that Windows can render that as a better 16x16 than
I can draw myself.)
The problem with icon editors is that they work from a
single pixel point of view, but images don't. (If you want to
lighten an image of an apple you can do it with one click
in a graphic editor, while it would take hours to do in a
typical icon editor.) So it's best to import an image to touch
up, rather than drawing it from scratch.
Nobody
C
Thanks for your detailed reply. I have some more relevant questions.
On Jun 13, 3:41 pm, "Mayayana" <mayay...@invalid.nospam> wrote:
> An ICO file consists of a simple header that describes
> the content, and 1 or more icons. Each icon consists
> of an image bitmap and a mask bitmap, which holds the
> transparency information in the form of a 2-color bitmap
> version of the image bitmap. (Black is transparent.)
> So you can have any number of icons in a single ICO
> file. They get stored in series, with the storage documented
> in the header. You just need to pick a program to make
> them with. Any decent icon editor will let you work on several
> images for one ICO. But anything bigger than 48x48 is relatively
> new. Truer color is also relatively new. You'll want to make
> sure that the icons you create still look OK on the oldest
> systems you plan to support. But you can also store
> different color depths in a single ICO file. For instance,
> most MS XP icons come as 16, 32 and 48 sizes, and in
> 16 and 256 color depths.
What will VB6 accept? 64x64 in 256 colours? And how will it look on XP
and Vista desktops? The old icons are looking bad on Windows 7.
>
> Personally I much prefer to create the images in a graphic
> editor and then use something to create an ICO from that.
> (I mostly use IrfnaView, creating 256-color 32x32 icons. I've
> found that Windows can render that as a better 16x16 than
> I can draw myself.)
> The problem with icon editors is that they work from a
> single pixel point of view, but images don't. (If you want to
> lighten an image of an apple you can do it with one click
> in a graphic editor, while it would take hours to do in a
> typical icon editor.) So it's best to import an image to touch
> up, rather than drawing it from scratch.
I have drawn one simple image in a bitmap, but it has rough edges. I
could do this better with a graphics program. I wonder if I should
download IrfanView or something else.
C
That might be a nice software for making icons, but I first need to
understand some basics.
C
> On 13/06/2011 11:34, C wrote:
>
> > On Windows 7, the old icons of VB6 look bad.
>
> > Can I have 64 by 64 icons for VB 6 programs?
>
> You can use any icon file, just take the 32x32, resize and tidy, that's
> all that we would do.
How do I resize (and tidy)? I had prepared it pixel by pixel very many
years back.
>
> OR, create your own application icon rather than using the default
> fallback icon.
>
> > How can I make 64 x 64 icons? I have read that 256 colour bitmaps are
> > accepted as icons. Is there a better way? I need to draw six curves
> > for one icon.
>
> Any icon editor (I use visual studio)
>
> --
> Dee Earley (dee.ear...@icode.co.uk)
> i-Catcher Development Teamhttp://www.icode.co.uk/icatcher/
Mayayana
What will VB6 accept? 64x64 in 256 colours? And how will it look on XP
and Vista desktops? The old icons are looking bad on Windows 7.
>
I don't know whether VB will *not* accept anything
as an icon resource, but I've never tried anything but
a 256-color 32x32.
You didn't mention what the old icons are. I'm guessing
that they're probably 16-color/4-bit. That used to be
common. With full-color display you can probably use
8, 24, or 32-bit. I doubt there's much difference. 256
colors is not very limiting with such a small image.
I've never used anything bigger than 32x32. I know that
on Vista 7 they can go up to 128x128... or is it 256x256?
But I've never tried that and I have no idea of where such
usage would be relevant. (I don't even know where 64x64
might be used. Maybe on very large Desktops?)
>
I have drawn one simple image in a bitmap, but it has rough edges. I
could do this better with a graphics program. I wonder if I should
download IrfanView or something else.
>
IrfanView can do a lot, but it's limited as a graphics
editor. If you don't have such an editor I'd suggest
downloading the GIMP. It's free. It's pretty good.
The GUI is a bit funky. There's no MDI parent window.
That's supposed to change in the next version. Other
than that it seems to work well.
Paint.Net is supposedly pretty good, too, but it requires
that you install a recent version of the .Net runtime.
That's something like 1/2 GB if you don't already have
it installed. Other than that, there are lots of free
programs that come with cameras, scanners, etc., but
most are not much good. And then there are the pro
programs like Photoshop -- very good but overproduced
and absurdly expensive. (I know a professional artist
who uses Corel instead. I don't know how the price of
that compares to Photoshop. I use Paint Shop Pro, but
they sold out to Corel, and it got extremely bloated even
before that happened.
Someone else might have better ideas about graphic
software. For myself, PSP5 is good enough for now. Aside
from that I'm waiting for the next version of GIMP to come
out and hoping that will be good enough to drop consideration
of all other options for good.
If you drew the image and it has rough edges than
you probably want to redraw it with anti-aliasing. Most
graphic editors will provide that option. It works by
blending the border pixels with the background color
so that you don't get sawtooth edges. That's the kind
of thing I had in mind when I said a graphic program
is much easier than drawing 1 pixel at a time.
Nobody
It's very decent for a freeware. It can create icons from any image. Just
open the image(bmp, jpg, gif, etc), then use Icon-->Create Windows Icon From
Image.
If you want free icons, see the end of this page:
http://www.small-icons.com/index.htm
They make them free, so you get used to them, and when you later need more
icons; because icons that you make in your own don't look as good, you end
up paying them.
Abhishek
use 32-bit alpha icons.
http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=59231&lngWId=1
Dont select the icons at design time, load them using code above and
resource file, having icon above 64x64 size is pretty useless and it only
increases the size of our application. I only use 16, 32, 48 size icon with
256 color and xp color each.
I would recommend microangleo icon editor, actually there are many good
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