If you’re like me, you want the look and feel of your computer to represent you.  So, in that, maybe you want your Internet Browser shortcut icon on your desktop to be something else – a picture that you made. Or, you have a website and you want to make a favicon.ico icon to display next to the URL of your website in a web browser’s taskbar (just like FunkyTower does!) You may also want a custom mouse cursor to replace that boring arrow. If you’re like me, you took a picture of your hand in a “finger pointing” position to be your mouse cursor…but how do we take our pictures and make them icons and mouse cursors? Well I have two free programs you HAVE to see to believe: PixelToolbox, and @icon suhi.

1. PixelToolbox

PixelToolbox is an 8-bit image editor for creating small 8-bit images, icons, patterns, and cursors. Now, the images you use do not have to be 8-bit; PixelToolbox converts them for you. To top it off, it’s got the option to have a transparent background. If you miss this feature, you’ll wind up with a cursor or icon with an ugly, square, white background – and who wants that?! If you don’t mind 8-bit graphics for your icons and cursors, this is a great product, and REALLY easy to use! You can use existing images that you may have – OR – you can draw your own as if you were using Paint. It’s really fun!

2. @icon sushi

I’ve been looking for a program like this for a long time. It creates high quality 32-bit icons with or without a transparent background. All you need to do is save your image as a jpg, png, bmp, psd, exe, icl, or dll file with an image size no greater than 256×256 pixels and it will do the rest. You have to import more than one image, for some odd reason – but the feature I find quite great is you can make an icon set. So, say you had a folder somewhere on your computer designated for each member of the family – you could literally design a custom icon for each folder and save that set as one .ico file. I was amazed at how easy it is to use – and honestly, when it comes to making icons, I prefer it over PixelToolbox by far. Use this to make desktop icons or your favicon.ico icon for your website – and it will have a great quality look.

So, below are the links to get to these great, free programs:

PixelToolbox

@icon sushi

Be sure to download these free programs right away, they’ll help you customize the look and feel of your PC!  I’m on vacation in Oregon right now, so me writing this article for you means these MUST be awesome programs.

What Do You Think?

Do you like these programs?  Got any questions about how to use these programs?  Know any other cool, free programs like these?  Whatever you have on your mind, let me know about it!  My e-mail is david@funkytower.com and I look forward to hearing from you!

Take it easy,
David Crandall

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Cool Apps, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.