KIconEdit Review

fair
key review info
application features
  • It has most of the tools which are needed for an easy creation of icons including: Line, Ellipse, Circle, Rectangle, Freehand, Eraser and Spraycan. More tools are planned, but not fully implemented.
  • (0 more, see all...)

Perhaps most of you who know how to use KDE noticed at some point that, if you install the graphics package, you also get the software necessary to edit icons. There is a lot of good software out there suitable for creating icons, but this one is specially designed to edit them. We are trying to decide now if it's still worth to be in the graphics package from KDE or if it's time the developers let it go.

In theory, KIconEdit is designed to help creating icons for KDE using the standard icon palette. First of all, if I want to create an icon, the best thing to do would be to use a full featured software like GIMP, Inkscape or Krita and to design the icon at a high resolution. Then, a simple scale down and perhaps a conversion to the standard icon palette will result in having my desired icon. There are many advantages in using this technique and perhaps the most important is that you can make your icon in many different sizes and even use it as a logo, if needed.

In KIconEdit the approach is different. You select the desired size and then paint your icon using very basic tools, and most often by painting each pixel individually. This isn't a very efficient method and I doubt people are still using it.

I see KIconEdit as a software similar to KolorPaint, only that it has less features, more bugs and only a few enhancements that make it an appropriate application for working at the pixel level.

Let's take a look at its interface and, at the same time, get through its most important features. To begin with, you should know that this software supports a fair amount of formats and that I was actually surprised by the presence of some of them - like JPEG - that are not really appropriate for icons, and by the lack of .ico. As you'll see later, this is the last of my worries.

If you choose to create a new icon, you can either design it from scratch or use some templates. I got a little excited when I saw the availability of templates, but when I went through them, I saw that there were actually only three icons you had to edit in order to get something out of them. In fact, the templates are useless and there is very small chance you'll use them at all.

In the left hand side of the screen you'll see the tools that are available in KIconEdit. These seem like basic tools that you can see in all basic drawing programs similar to the notorious Paint from Microsoft. The tools present in KIconEdit are a lot more basic than the tools in KolourPaint, and even though you'll generally use the freehand tool, the rest are badly needed. For example, you can't see any size of any of the tools. The fact that I can't select how thick the freehand should be, the line, or the eraser gets pretty annoying. There is no easy way to draw a rounded rectangle, or borders to some of the shapes (like the rectangle or ellipse) and I don't have an eraser to erase only one color. Considering all these features, I can't really think of anything to like about this tool.

In the right hand side of the screen you have an area that displays your icon in a thumbnail, one that shows the system colors used for your icon and, if it's the case, there is another area that shows your custom colors. I'm very satisfied with the rendering quality in the thumbnail. In a way it's better than what you have in KolourPaint and here, what you see is what you get. About the use of custom colors in your icons, I think you're pretty safe and - if you need them - use the custom colors and don't worry: your OS will most certainly be able to display your icons correctly.

Perhaps the most important feature of a software of this type is "undo / redo". Unfortunately, in KIconEdit "undo" doesn't work. It is quite weird, but it seems to delete random pixels when you try an 'undo'. For this reason alone this software can't be used.

At last, I want to say that there are actually some things that I like, and if those were implemented in KolourPaint, it could easily take over KIconEdit. I'm talking about the configuration options, especially options regarding the checkerboard. In KolourPaint it doesn't overlap well with the grid, but here it does it perfectly. In KIconEdit you can also select custom colors, even the size of its squares, and this is excellent when working at the pixel level.

The Good

This software has some good parts and here I think I can easily mention the thumbnail preview and the options related to the checkerboard. Generally, I try to find a generous good part in any software, but for this one I can't really think of more.

The Bad

The undo feature works terribly and this makes it unusable. With no undo to a software like this, there is almost no usability left. There is no support for ICO and not even a basic support for SVG. There are only a few tools and this technique of creating icons is obsolete.

The Truth

The truth is that, at this stage, this software is useless. I can't really see a reason for its place in KDE's graphics package and I think that letting it go would be the right thing to do. With minor improvements, KolourPaint could take its place in terms of functionality and nothing would be lost. I don't think further development to it would be of much help because it has reached a time when people do things differently.

Check out this screenshots of KIconEdit:

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user interface 3
features 1
ease of use 4
pricing / value 5


final rating 2
Editor's review
fair
 
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