Icon Constructor

Icon Constructor is a powerful tool that allows you to create Windows icons out of any popular photo format, including BMP and JPG.
The application lets you create not only Windows icons, but also email shortcuts, a skinned folder, AIM buddy icons, ICQ user shortcuts and web shortcuts, all with the help of a very eye candy interface that makes everything easy as pie.
Creating an icon is not that difficult, especially because Icon Constructor allows you to open any photo on your computer, crop the area you wish to use as an icon, customize it and save the resulted project on your computer.
The program works with BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PSD, TGA and TIFF formats and provides multiple editing effects, such as sepia and mono, auto-contrast and auto-levels, hue, brightness and contrast adjustments.
Another good thing about Icon Constructor is the fact that it boasts lots of icon styles, giving you the chance to easily create good looking icons with minimum effort. Plus, you can also change icon settings by picking one of the available sizes, 16x16, 32x32 or 48x48, and either apply the selected style and sharpen the image.
Just as expected, Icon Constructor runs on low resources and gets along very well with all Windows versions, without asking for administrator privileges to launch on Windows 7.
Overall, Icon Constructor does its job in a quick way, while providing a great amount of handy features and an eye candy interface that comes to support beginners throughout the whole editing process.