IconXP

IconXP is a feature-rich software tool that lets you create and design icons for your files. It is oriented toward users of all skill levels.

Upon deployment, you can create a new icon by specifying its size, color mode, conversion mode (cut, dither, grayscale) and other properties (e.g. smooth resampling). These options can be saved as default for future projects.

You can use some standard drawing tools, like a color picker, eraser, pencil, brush, bucket, line, rectangle and ellipse, together with color fill. It is possible to undo or redo actions.

You can adjust the image transparency, lock the alpha channel or RGB channel/palette, paint over the original image, change the canvas size, duplicate the picture, as well as apply various filters (e.g. negative, flip, rotate, drop shadow, smooth).

Other features of IconXP let you zoom in and out of the icon (or enable automatic zooming), make file associations with ICO, ICNS, RSRC and PNG, edit Windows icons, disable message confirmations when deleting images from the icon, as well as select the Clipboard-to-images paste method (by selections, as a Metafile, or as a Bitmap), just to name a few.

The feature-packed program requires a very small amount of system resources, so it doesn't affect your computer's overall performance. It has a good response time to key strokes and mouse events, supports keyboard shortcuts and contains user documentation. We have not come across any issues during our tests; IconXP did not hang, crash or pop up error dialogs. To sum it up, IconXP should please all users who want to create and design icons, regardless of their experience level.