Transparent Images - Add-on icons - Google add-on

[Alan Wells]

Publishing an add-on requires transparent images for your app icon.  The instructions for your app icon are:

Quote:

Upload an icon image that represents this item, and ensure it complies with the following:

• 128x128 total pixels
• For square icons, use alpha to make 16 of the 128 pixels per side transparent (96x96 visual weight)
• For circular icons, the visual icon should be 112x112 (use alpha to make the remaining pixels transparent)
• For other icon shapes, use alpha to maintain the same 96x96 visual weight

Additional advice:

• Your icon should be flat; avoid noticeable perspective, 3D, and shadows.
• Don’t use text in your icon.

End Quote

Your icon should be 2D with transparent area around the image.  Trying to make the background transparent after the image has already been created does not work very well.  There are free online tools for making an image transparent, but if your image doesn't have well defined edges, the end result can look bad.

You could pay someone to do your images, but lots of people don't want to have any expenses to publish an add-on.

I just found out, that Windows Paint 3D, has the capability to start with a transparent background.  Make sure to save the file as 2D png.

My images didn't have a transparent background for a long time.  Because I needed to go through the review process again, it was caught by the add-on advisor.  Creating the graphics can take a lot of time and effort.  So, any free, and easy way to do something is helpful.

[Dimu Designs]

GIMP has been my goto image editor for several years now, Images start out with a transparent layer by default. Simply export to PNG and you're good to go. If you're familiar with Photoshop it should be fairly easy to pickup. Krita is also a good alternative. And if you prefer working with vector graphic Inkscape is among the best tools available. And yes they are all free. 

[Riël Notermans]

Pixlr.com/editor for all my icon business.

Op wo 5 jun. 2019 06:09 schreef Dimu Designs <dimud...@gmail.com>:

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[Darren D'Mello]

Do you know which Tool Google uses to create a SVGs. The graphics of Google have very promising look and feel.

Regards,

Darren

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[Martin Hawksey]

... I think that might be down to the talent they employ rather than the software ;) Inkscape, already mentioned, is open source and natively supports svg

[Dimu Designs]

I agree. Talent can never be understated. Inkscape is ultimately just a tool, but its chock full of great features and a strong community supporting it. 

What's also great about these tools is the option to extend their functionality via scripts (just like we do with GSuite). You can use python (or more recently javascript) with Inkscape and GIMP (via script-fu and python) to create custom tooling.

And for anyone interested in 3D modeling and animation, compositing, pre-viz etc. Blender is pretty much the best free/open-source solution around. There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you have the basics down you can do some amazing things. Its also extensible using python as well.

We are at a point now where many companies are setting up graphics tool-chains composed solely of open-source software.