14 DAY TRIAL // Some time has passed since we had an icon maker here, and problems like this need to be solved when they come up. It took me some time to find a cure, but the good part is that I found it, and we have it right here, shaped as a falcon.
I know you don't have a clue yet, so here it goes... Today's icon editor is developed by Falco Software Company, whose logo is a falcon, and the same happens with the program, its name being Falcon Icon Studio and its logo - a falcon's head.
Falcon Icon Studio's last version was released only a few days ago, and its number tag says 1.4. What I have here is a 14 days trial, and to buy the full version you have to pay 14.95$, but this offer is available only during this month, so if you're going to like this, you know what to do! The setup package has 1.5MB in size and installing the program was a piece of cake, and I can assure you it's going to be the same for you. Now, let's move to the really interesting part - interface and features, as usual.
Falcon Icon Studio has an interface common to most of the Windows programs belonging to this family, well organized and very easy to use. There's no art to be seen here, but the usual menu bar, toolbar, the tools bar, effects and color bars, the main work area and the colors palette. Some things are not exactly the way they should be - as an example, you have to select the blur setting item first, change the options and then use the blur image command, instead of having them both inside the same window, using a single blur command - but the program is easy to use by every beginner, and that's the good part.
What this program can do should be obvious by now - it can draw icons, but not only that. For example, you can open a picture from your hard drive and save it as an icon. The file formats that can be opened are standard cursors, icons and animated cursors, together with GIF, PNG, BMP, JPG and the image resources from the EXE and DLL files.
The file formats supported start with 16X16 monochrome icons and can go up to 64X64 XP icons (true color with alpha channel), but these are the built in presets. I was worried to see that support for Windows Vista icons is not available, but you can set a custom size for your icon in order to solve that. I worked a while using a 256X256 resolution for my document and all went fine...until the program crashed, but I wasn't able to make it crash the same way again.
The tools included in Falco Icon Studio are the basic ones that you need for designing nice Windows icons - color selection, fill, pencil, line, text, four selection tools and a few others. Using them is as easy as using Ms Paint, so I can't see any problem with that.
The effects available here are not as many as I would like to have, but they can be very useful. Using the items from the Effects menu, you can adjust brightness, contrast, color, HSB (hue, saturation and brightness), blur your image, invert colors, turn the current icon into a grayscale one and sharpen the image. This is all, but I think that getting it for almost 15$ is a fair deal, and I hope to see much better versions of this program in the future.
The Good
Falco Icon Studio can create icons up to 2048X2048 pixels in size, it is easy to use for everybody and has most of the tools needed to get the job done.
The Bad
This program doesn't offer support for layers and you can't use it to create cursors or animated icons, like most programs from this family. During my short experience with it, I got two unexpected program crashes that I wasn't able to reproduce.
The Truth
Falco Icon Studio is a nice program that has enough room for a lot of improvements, but I am sure that beginners will love it, and maybe not only them. I wouldn't pay for it, not even considering this month's offer, but I must say that it was a pleasure to review it, and your trial period should be the same, so take your time to enjoy Falco Icon Studio!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
