Convert several images to Windows® icons (batch processing)

An interesting feature of IconWorkshop™ is to convert an image into an icon. Some image formats support 32 BPP alpha channel transparency which is very interesting to create hi-quality RGB/A images in icons. During the operation the image will be converted in several formats that will be included in the icon. The following image formats are supported:

• BMP - Windows® bitmap (32 BPP alpha channel transparency supported).

• PNG - Portable Network Graphic (32 BPP alpha channel transparency supported).

• PSD - Photoshop (32 BPP alpha channel transparency and layers supported).

• JP2 - JPEG 2000 (32 BPP alpha channel transparency supported).

• JPG - JPEG

• TGA - Targa

• GIF - Compuserve GIF

• Others - Various other formats supported: TIFF, PCD (PhotoCD), PIC (Apple PICT), PCX (Zsoft), WMF (Windows® MetaFile)

Using this feature you can Create Several Windows® Icons from image files in one operation. This is what we call a batch procedure. We'll perform this task using the built-in IconWorkshop™ explorer.

Select the source images

1. Open a new File Browser window. Choose File/New/File File Browser...

2. When the window is opened, select the folder which contains the images using the tree in the left pane.

3. When done, the files appear (with preview) in the right pane. Select the image files you wish to convert to icons. You can use Shift/Ctrl + Mouse to select several files. Use Ctrl+A to select all. Use +/- to select/unselect by specifying filters.

Batch create the Windows® icons

4. Choose File Browser/Batch Create Windows® Icons from Selection or Ctrl+Shift+C.

5. A dialog box opens. In "Standard Image Formats" () and "Extra Image Formats" () choose the image formats you wish to add in the icons.

6. In Image Adjustment group (), you can add a smooth or sharp filter to the image shrinking process. You can also use or not a dithering method to render image using 256 or 16 colors. In Transparency group (), an option permits to use opaque images (i.e. without transparency) and specify a color to make transparent.

7. When done, click OK. The batch operation starts immediately, the hourglass mouse pointer is displayed during the creation. When done the new Windows® icons are added to the folder contents.

The created icons have the same filename as the original image files with different extension (depending on the icon types). A system has been implemented to index the files if necessary to avoid overwriting. When you create icons from Image Files, the whole image is selected and resized keeping its aspect ratio. If it contains transparency, it is kept during the creation.