how to do icons?

i just want to know how can i create some nice icons..clean not glossy...is there any software that does it or are all of them done in Illustrator, Photoshop...etc?any good tutorials?
thanks

 

Inkscape is the best tool I've found for doing icons. Not only is it vector (photoshop isn't) but it has MUCH better colouring options than Illustrator.

Inkscape is free and open-source (much like Firefox) and you can get it at www.inkscape.org

check out the Tango Desktop Project, and Oxygen icons, for some free icons made with inkscape that are professional quality to get started.

 

Inkscape looks interesting. Thanks for the link.

 

Inkscape doesn't come close the the capabilities and ease of Illustrator, although if your looking for a free alternative, it is definitely an option. But there's always the free trial of Illustrator you can use!

as for tutorials, google is your friend there are many out there. I would suggest vectortuts.com and learning the program (which ever you choose for now) in all its aspects.

 

Exist special progs for create icon(ArtIcons Pro, Axialis IconWorkshop 6.0 and more)

 

i have have IconWorkshop 6.0 and it works

 

@JoshFizgerts:

I'm sorry but you're misinformed about this one.

Inkscape does all manner of things that Illustrator doesn't do. RGBa colour space. Only now with CS4 has illustrator managed to being to support RGBa colourspace which is SO useful for icon design.

Gradient on a stroke. Again, I'm not sure if this was added in CS4 for sure or not, but INkscape has supported this for years, and again, brutally useful for icon design.

Live path effects, spiro curves, full SVG support, there's a HUGE list of things that make Inkscape FAR superiour than Illustrator for RGB icon design.

Illuystrator has better CMYK support, far better text support and better PDF support. It's a great product and I paid for it and use it daily. But it's far behind Inkscape for vector illustration for things like icons.

I won't even lie to you - I'm on a mac right now, and a friend wantyed a custom icon. I showed her the icon as PNG and she wanted a modification. The file was a standard SVG, so I opened it in Illustrator. Half rendered. Junk. I opened it in inkscape, made the edit, exported as PNG, made icon with pic2icon, sent it to her and within moments it was her new icon and in her dock. No thanks to Illustrator. Try it yourself.

Also, why would you recommend against a free and open source program that does even HALF of what a commercial program does - a beginning user wouldn't use the other half of the advanced features anyway and could certainly do inifitely more for 0$ than any commercial program.

As it turns out Inkscape is equally good as illustrator, just with different areas of strength. Inkscape owns icon design. that's why any designer who's serious about teir work puts their ignorance aside, and for a bottom line of 0$ spent gets inkscape and uses both, each according to their strength. Trust me, your work will be better if you use all the tools available to you.

 

Cant You just do "outline stroke" and then apply an gradient?

 

@caffeineromance:

If you do 'outline stroke' the stroke is no longer a stroke is it?

The whole benefit of having strokes is that they're strokes. Inkscape does gradients on strokes, and I actually used them all the time. I can't do that in Illustrator.

Part of the reason Stokes are so useful is when you change the shape, the stroke changes with it - if you make them two independent shapes, you have to modify both which isn't fun...

 

What a great fight between Illusstrator and Inkscape.

I am eager to know who will win this ?


Just Joking.

But its all about personal interest. Because nothing is perfact.

Regards
SAM

 

it's not really about personal interest, both are great tools, and both are better than the other in certain areas. Yes, I could be a professional designer and use only one of them and still get by, but if I've already got Illustrator and it's free to get inkscape, and possible icrease the quality of my work for free why *wouldn't* I?

Likewise, you don't *need* to shell out the money for Illustrator just in order to be able ot do professional design. As a trained designer I can say with total honesty that I could do professional work using only one or the other, but that learning Inkscape and it's advanced features has greatly increased my understanding of vector graphics and I produce better results even in illustrator, now that I have that knowledge.

 

So can you give any tutorial for inkscape ?

i want to learn vector designing.

Regards
SAM

 

Can you give any ebook or tutorial site of inkscape ?

i want to learn how to create vector designs.

Regards
SAM

 

eBook?! um.....most tutorials for learning vector graphics will apply whether they're made for Illustrator, Fireworks or Inkscape -the skills required to make a vector illustration are transferrable between the programs, and the tools are pretty much the same.

There are plenty of inkscape tutorials around, google will show you where they are. The best way to learn though is to grab the Tango Icons and play with them, start of by modifying them and learn how they do what they do, eventually you'll be able ot make your own from scratch.

Tango icon project: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project

good luck!

 

you can use photoshop but you should have a good experience in designing .. most icons are 32 * 32 px

 

in this day and age, with Linux having support for vector icons, and vector capabilities being added to OS X soon I woudl *not* even consider designing pixel-based icons.

most icons are also not deisgned at 32x32, currently the common sizes (and unless you do a vector image you'll have to create all of these by hand:

16x16, 22x22, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256 (and OS X leopard has 512x512 for all of their icons)