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New IconForge 7 Series Release

the most complete icon editing studio

IconForge offers you a comprehensive environment for creating, extracting and editing icons, cursors, and animated icons/cursors. It also gives you a wide variety of tools useful for other projects, such as website URL favorite/bookmark icons, filmstrip animations, wallpaper tiles, changing default Windows shell icons and cursors, etc. The IconForge 7 series adds many new tools, options, and functions -- it now even allows you to edit photographs, scanned art, and other larger images.

IconForge reads and writes most common image formats (GIF, JPG, BMP, etc.), as well as specialty formats such as icon and cursor libraries. And you will find many other features, such as creation of stand-alone .exe icon and cursor library albums, auto-generation of common animation effects, a wide variety of special Effects filters, ability to change icons within program files, and more.

The IconForge 7 series is a complete rewrite, which builds both upon IconForge's already powerful icon editing features, as well as adding expertise and many great features garnered from our ImageForge line of image editors. You can try out the new features by downloading an evaluation copy from the Download Page.

Here is a partial listing of enhancements found in the IconForge 7 series:

Completely rewritten engine;
Interface: Enhancements include...

Editing Window includes side view showing all icons found within a multi-resolution icon or animation being edited. You can quickly switch between icon resolutions. Click the tab in the upper/right corner to hide or display the panel;
Ruler - inches or centimeters, right-click upper/left to set increments and DPI (for certain non-icon image formats);
Preview Window options now include actual size and magnify mouse location views;
An Update Image button controls whether or not tool continues to act on the original image. E.g., if you wish to use the Putty tool to continue to stretch an area, you would enable the Update Image button on the upper/left corner of the tool options bar;
The Skin for the entire IconForge interface can now be changed - including the IconForge Assistant mascot image which appears on many dialog windows.

Tools:

New alpha transparency options for nearly everything;
New Brush Options drop-down allows you to choose from standard brush shapes, modify Intensity and Edge controls to configure brush transparency, add random Rotation to brushes, and select from more pen sizes. There is also a new panel to add, delete and edit Custom Brush shapes;
Greatly enhanced painting Style options include gradients which may now be dragged off center and rotated, improved textures and patterns, and application of gradients to brush strokes;
New Crayon brush;
New Pencil brush;
Improved Chalk brush;
Enhanced Watercolor brush;
Updated Oil brush;
New Paint with Image brush;
New Arrow tool;
New Gradient Line tool;
New Fill to Border tool (fills everything bounded by the selected color);
New Transparent Color Extractor tool;
New Bordered Rectangle tool;
New Gradient Rectangle tool;
New Border Polygon tool;
New Select by Filling tool;
New Clone tool (you can even clone between any 2 open images);
New Magnify tool;
New 3D Object tool (great for doing 3D initials);
Improved Text tool;
New Channel Eraser tool;
New Ripple effect tool;
New Add Noise tool;
New convert to Gray effect brush;
New Putty effect tool;
New FishEye effect tool;
New Deform effect tool;
New Swirl effect brush;
New Bulge effect tool;
New paint with Clipart tool;
New Fill tool options;
Syringe color sampler now displays RGB values for colors on the Status Bar (may also be set to display as HEX values);
3D Shapes now can use values from brush/fill Styles;
Fuzzy Rectangle and Ellipse have been improved, and now can use values from brush/fill Styles;
New Drop Shadow option is available for most shapes and clipped regions;
Clone tool can also be used to clone between 2 images;

Improved Color Palettes...

Choose from 16-color Quick palette, color History palette, color Rainbow palette, or color mixing Entire palette;
The Custom mixing palette buttons allow you choose from rainbow, default colors, or a list of colors actually found in the image's palette. You can also mix between two colors, use RGB or HSV controls, show the image's color count for each color, load and save palettes, etc.;

Enhanced menu functions...

Option to specify DPI for new images (File menu);
New options when using Save As (File menu);
New options when using the Convert a Group of Images function (Tools menu);
Expanded Set Preferences options (Options menu);
New Dither Method options allow you to change the method used to convert an image to a lower resolution (Image menu);

Expanded imaging filter Effects...

New Acid Wash for that tie-dyed look;
Improved Brightness filter;
Enhanced Contour;
More optionms for Curl Edges;
Improvements to Detect Edges;
New Enhance Photo fixes lighting and other common photo problems;
New Equalize;
Improved Fuzz Edge filter;
Improved Gamma Correction options;
Enhanced Line Engrave (woodcut);
New Melt filter;
New Mesh filter (puts a mesh over your picture);
Improved Mirror options;
Reworked Mosaic;
Enhanced Oil Paint;
Improved Pinch;
New Plugins (handles many Photoshop-type plugins);
Improved Reduce Colors options;
New Solarize;
Enhanced Spotlight;
New Texture allows you to add natural textures to an image;
Improved Tile Maker for making seamless tiled images;

Animation effects include many new enhancements and auto-generated effects;
New right-click options to Clear button on the Speed Bar;
Enhanced Printing options (e.g., includes option to print multiple open images to a single sheet);
Support for pressure-sensitive stylus and tablet input devices;
New alternate method to access TWAIN devices;
and more...

With all that, you would think that the program would be more complex to use. But we have tried mightily to keep it easy to use, while adapting more sophisticated image editing options to a pixel-level editing environment. Hopefully, we succeeded. Happily, beta testers reported that they actually find the 7 series easier to use than older versions.

We are certain that you'll want to add these new features to your image-editing toolkit. For more information about IconForge, including screen shots, and links to a trial version click here.

Existing registered users may find upgrade information here.

Click here for frequently asked questions about icons and cursors.

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