Drawing Icons

So what’s the best tool for creating icons in RISC OS?

!Draw? !Paint? Something else…?

Also, what size should they be?

Application icons should be 34×34px in standard resolution modes, 68×68 if you supply a Sprites11 for very high res displays. I’d recommend reducing to an optimised 256-colour palette, unless you want it to work on pre-3.5 machines, in which case use a numbered mode.

As for creating them, it depends what you enjoy using. I use ArtWorks to create the basic image, then touch-up in Paint.

Application icons should be 34×34px in standard resolution modes, 68×68 if you supply a Sprites11 for very high res displays.

It’s polite to also offer a small version (small_xxx or sm!app) at 16×16 or 34×34, to save the Wimp scaling the large icons.

Cool thanks, I’ve been playing a bit more with Paint and I think with a bit of practice it will do for me (maybe I can put ArtWorks on my shopping list for the future…)

Regarding the colour palette—how do I optimize it to only a few colours (but lots of shades) in Paint?

Also, I’m using Paint 2.13, is that the latest version?

ArtWorks has a very flexible bitmap export tool that can shrink colour palettes, but if you don’t have that I also use Spr2Png (seems to be available from http://old-www.moreofthesa.me.uk/progs.graphics.html), which is very quick. Just edit your sprite in 16M colours, and when you’re happy drag it to the Spr2Png icon bar icon, with options set for for Reduce. This will create an optimised PNG. Drag this PNG back to the same icon, and you’ll get a sprite with the palette preserved.