IconLover

IconLover is a software application with comes packed with several features for creating icons for your files. It can be handled by users of any experience level, and it comes equipped with extensive documentation that should help novices.

Versatile utility that can be deployed easily

The installation procedure is relatively straightforward, as the program does not require any other software in order to perform its functions. The setup wizard will guide you through the process step by step.
The interface of the program is clean and pretty intuitive. IconLover supports several file types, such as ANI, ICC, ICL, ICO, ICNS and RSRC.

Intuitive application that enables you to create icons from scratch

You can create a new icon from scratch or by using an image file, as well as extract all icons from your computer or download them from the Internet.
When building a fresh icon, you can specify its size, coloring mode and conversion mode (e.g. grayscale), as well as make it packed for Windows Vista. Settings can be saved as default.

Includes a decent collection of drawing tools

IconLover supplies users with some standard drawing tools, such as selection, color picker, eraser, paint brush, pencil, air brush, flood fill, text, curved line and rectangle. Furthermore, you can select a gradient for the color filling, flip or roll the picture, as well as make image adjustments (e.g. opacity, brightness, hue) and apply effects (e.g. replace color, drop shadow, merge with the background color).
The program barely uses system memory and CPU, has a good response time and worked smoothly during our evaluation, without freezing, crashing or showing error notifications; we have not come across any problems. Unfortunately, there is no help file available. First-time users may take a while to get familiarized with IconLover's features.