Axialis IconWorkshop 5.1 Released

Axialis IconWorkshop lets you create, convert and manage Windows icons. This new version features support for Mac OS icons.

The Icon Editor supports XP icons with alpha channel, many image adjustments (brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, flip, scale, rotation at any angle, drop shadow, filters), import/export (Photoshop PSD with layers, transparent BMP and PNG), and smart new image format creation.

The Built-in Icon Explorer permits you to browse/search and display/import icon files from your disk drives. A built-in image viewer opens various image formats (Photoshop PSD with layers, transparent PNG, GIF, WMF, JPEG and more) and create a new multi-formats icon based on a portion of this image in just one click.

The Compiler enables you to create redistributable packages of your icon libraries. It generates a compressed user-friendly install procedure. With the corporate edition, you can ask the end-user to enter a serial code to unlock the installation.

IconWorkshop is available in personal and corporate editions. If you've purchased a previous version of Axialis IconWorkshop, you're entitled for a free upgrade to the latest version. A 30-Day Tryout version is also available for download.


What's New in 5.1 (from the read me):

• New interface - New, more dynamic look.


• Full Macintosh icon support - Now you can create icons for the Macintosh. You're able to make, read, convert icons and save them as ICNS, RSC and BIN (MacBinary). All icon formats are supported up to OSX 10.4 Tiger. The new 256x256 image format is also supported. This is not an export-to-mac feature but a full implementation of the Macintosh icon format specification in all features of the product.


• Batch conversion of icons from Windows to Macintosh - A very handy feature which will permit you to convert hundreds of Windows icons to Macintosh in minutes.


• Batch creation of Macintosh icons from images - Select several images and create associated Macintosh icons, with all formats embedded, in a few seconds.


• Icon normalization - This feature permits you to create a set of icons with identical image formats embedded. This is very useful especially if you want to publish icons.


• Macintosh Icontainer libraries support - This version permits to extract icons from Macintosh Icontainer icon libraries. Multi-state Mac icons are also supported.


• Composition of icons using drag & drop - You'll create original icons from a library of symbols in minutes: Select the objects (disk, folder, screen...) in the librarian and drag them using the mouse in the icon editor window. Resize and move it using the mouse then repeat the operation to add other overlay symbols in your icon. You've done your own icon in seconds!


• Real time preview in Brightness, Hue, Saturation dialogs - A very handy feature which permits you to adjust icons with precision.


• Full support of JPEG 2000 - This is the future format for raster icons. It has a better compression ration than PNG (can be set with lossy compression like JPEG) and support alpha channels. It has been completely included in all features of the product (load/save/export/convert).


• Full support of GIF - CompuServe GIF image format is widely used in Web pages because the majority of Web browsers recognize it. It has been completely included in all features of the product (load/save/export/convert) with Web-optimization options.


• Better image quality in image resizing and blending - Now crystal clear results in all scale/blending operations!


• New sample icons - Some icon artists gave us permissions to include their icons in the product as samples. You can enjoy these icons for your personal desktop use. Do not use them in products, they're copyrighted - see Sample Icons Terms of Use topic.


• Free object library - In librarian, select the Objects folder and you'll find many images and symbols that you can use freely to make your icons. What a pleasure to compose your icons using drag & drop!


• Other enhancements and bug fixes.

Links:

• Axialis IconWorkshop
• 30-Day Tryout Download