Create An Icon With MS Paint

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to make an icon using Microsoft Paint, which is a free application that come installed on most windows operating systems, you dont need to shell out x amount of money to buy icon maker software when you can do it freely with Microsoft paint.

Step.1

Preparing our work area.
open Ms Paint most cases click  start | all programs | accessories | paint
C:\WINDOWS\system32\mspaint.exe

Once you have paint open we need to set the canvas size for our icon, which we will do by clicking Image | Attributes or CTRL+E and set to 32 x 32 pixels see fig.1 below.

that will be the size of our icon, but it is a little too small to work with so lets make our work area a little bigger by clicking View | Zoom | Custom | 800%
that will make our work area much more easier to work on, but we can make better still to work with by clicking View | Zoom | Show grid you should now be presented with something looking like fig.2 below.

to make things even better for us click View | Zoom | Show Thumbnail

this will allow us to see what our work will look like at its real size as we are working in an 800% zoom. you should now have something looking like fig.3 below.

ok thats our work are set up to create our icon lets move on to step 2.

Step.2

i am just going to do a simple icon here to demonstrate, i have used the elipse tool
to drag out a circle on our canvas with a black solid colour fill see fig.4 below.

NOTE: if you hold down the shift key whilst dragging out the circle it will be uniformed

now using the elips tool again  drag out a smaller circle this time with a white solid colour fill place slightly to the top right leaving a black edge at the top, as we are doing an 8ball icon. see fig.5 below.

all that is left is to add the number eight to the icon, if you have some pixel fonts installed on your computer you could use the text tool to add the number eight or you can do what i have done and used the pencil tool to manualy draw pixel by pixel the number eight untill you have something looking like fig.6 below.

thats it you have just created you first icon using Ms Paint that has cost you absolutely nothing. to export this as an icon file *.ico you will need to click

File | Save As |
select 24-bit Bitmap (*.bmp;*.dib) as the file type
i gave the file name as 8ball.ico whatever name you give it always add the .ico to the end else it will save as a bitmap file and will nor be able to be used as an icon.
see fig.7 below.

thanks for reading hope this proves usefull to you and maybe others.

download: 8ball (277B) added: 22/03/2010 clicks: 5 description: ms paint icon tutorial