When I double click on a .ico file in Visual Studio 2010 (Professional), it opens what looks like an icon editor. It looks like it should be really easy to pick a color from the left and edit pixels.
But my mouse is a magnifying glass icon. Left click, right click, all they do is toggle zoom on the icon. I can't figure out how to do anything useful.
Am I missing something obvious? Is this icon view as useless as it seems?
You can't directly edit 32-bit color icons but you can convert them manually to 24-bit :
Right click > Add new icon
Open your Icon1.ico file.
Right click > New Image Type or press Ins to open the New Icon Image Type dialog.
Select the format you want, say 96x96, 24 bit or add any custom size and color depth.
Then copy/paste from your 32-bit icon file and save.
Et voilà ! You can now edit your 24-bit color icon.
Doh! I needed to enable View -> Toolbars -> Image Editor.
Thanks to #detale.
The icon is built by an external app.
For Visual Studio 2008 & 2010 image editor,
"Using the Image Editor, you can view 32-bit images, but you cannot edit them."
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s1dadd79.aspx
For the PNG images used as button icons that Visual Studio cannot edit you can use external editor as MS Paint.
open PNG in Visual Studio 2010
right click on the white canvas -> Open External Editor
Visual Studio can edit icons, but not 24-bit color icons.
If you have a Mac OS X machine around, you can edit Windows icons with the Icon Composer application included with the free Developer Tools.
I just discovered this accidentally while working on some cross-platform Mac/Windows code.
I finally found an easy way to do it without visual studio, GIMP
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
Visual Studio 2022 (available free) has an icon editor built in. Just in case you end up here because you tried to insert a colourful image into a a 256x256 24 bit icon and your colours get messed up: in the editor toolbar on the top right there is a selector for opaque/transparent background, but only when you have a rectangle- or irregular area selection tool active. Default backgroundis set to transparent, you need to set it to opaque to retain your image. (There's a special colour for transparency; though my image does not contain that the colours were wrong)
Related
I have been reading a lot of posts about creating icons and then assigning one of those icons in Visual Studio Project --> Properties --> Icon and Manifest. When I do this, I get a message that the icon is not valid. The primary way I have been doing this is using MSPaint.
This is when I save a 24-bit icon in MSPaint, which is mentioned in one of the posts I read. I cannot find any editing ability in the image editor of Visual Studio 2012. So, how does one create a simple icon for an application?
I know there are free converters out there. I am asking specifically if there is a way to convert using existing tools like Visual Studio, MSPaint, and so on.
Creating an icon in MSPaint works just fine. Here's how you should proceed to get it to work.
In Visual Studio
Open Resources.resx from Solution Explorer (it's in the Properties folder)
Choose Icons from DropDown Menu on the left [Ctrl+3]
Choose Add New Icon from the DropDown Menu Add Resource
Enter a name for the Icon Resource file
Right click on all the icons in the left panel - one at a time - and choose Delete Image Type
(The last icon cannot be deleted - Leave it for now)
In MSPaint or an image program of your choise (I prefer Microsoft Paint 3D)
Create/Open the image that you would like to use (It could be a screenshot of your program)
Resize the image to 256x256 pixels
Select the full image [Ctrl+A] and then copy the image [Ctrl+C]
In Visual Studio
Right click in the left panel (the icon panel) and choose New Image Type... [Ins]
Choose Target Image Type 256x256, 24 bit
(Select the New Target Type and) Paste [Ctrl+V] the image you copied from your image program
In your image program and in Visual Studio
Repeat the above Image Copy (image program) and Target Paste (Visual Studio) process for the 24 bit icon size's 128x128, 64x64, 32x32 and 16x16 (and/or the ones you like to support)
Don't forget to delete the last icon you couldn't delete before
In Visual Studio
Save the icon file (.ico) (by closing its tab or using [Ctrl+S])
Add the icon to your forms
Right click your project file in the Solution Explorer and choose Properties
(You'll also find it in the Visual Studio Menu Debug -> "Your Project Name" Properties...)
Choose the Application section
Under Resources - Icon and manifest browse to and select the icon file you just created.
All set...
(Tested with Visual Studio 2017 & Visual Studio Enterprise 2019)
When this question was posted in 2016, it made more sense to use only MSPaint and VS. But nowadays, you can just use https://icoconverter.com/
Upload your image file (PNG, GIF, JPG, etc.)
Select ICO for Windows 7, Windows 8, Vista and XP
Download the ICO file, which contains various resolutions of your original image.
So this is how it started... I've managed to create an icon for my program in Visual Studio. The icon looked perfectly smooth in photoshop. I saved the file as .ico with using a photoshop plugin. I want the transparency so my icon was saved as 8 bit RGB. After importing the icon in my exe then this happened.
(Posted on behalf of the OP).
I've downloaded IcoFX and opened my file as 8 bit RGB png. Then I clicked: Image(from the top navigation menu) -> Create Windows Icon From Image. It detected it as Windows Vista because it's resolution is 256x256. Finally saved it and imported it in my Visual Studio project. The icon was so smooth after following this procedure!
I am "attempting" to use the image editor in Visual Studio 2013 to fix a gif file. The "documentation" references an image menu which is missing. I am also attempting to set the foreground and background colors.
Does anyone have any advice on how to do this?
The image editor has been replaced in VS2013, it no longer uses a dedicated menu. So whatever documentation you are using is surely outdated. The VS2013 specific documentation is here.
Pick, say, the Pen tool from the toolbar. The Properties window lets you set the fore- and background colors.
I have been looking for , lets use the word "mods", for visual studio left and right to be able to change the background and font color of the code editor for quite a while now. This is a simple question and hopefully not a duplicate of Is it possible to change backround color of editor and autocomplete tooltips in Visual Studio?. If I can refine my question a bit more, is it possible to manually change the background color of the code and text editor, or does mods or plugins or addons exist somewhere to do this feature for me? My eyes are straining on the white background...
I am using visual studio 2010
From the main menu, go to Tools -> Options. From there open up Environment -> Fonts and Colors. If you don't want to spent the time configuring it that way (which would be completely understandable), download the theme editor, or pick and download a nice theme at http://studiostyl.es/
Within VS2010 I'm using a dark/pastel color scheme. SP2010 Feature Designer has a Manifest tab with a Preview of Packaged Manifest read-only XML pane.
As you can see from the two screenshots, there is text in the pane, but it's basically invisible due to the background pane color.
Is there any way to change the font color, from that light gray to something else? I've tried changing several display items within Tools\Options\Environment\Fonts and Colors with no luck.
As a last resort, is there a way to change the pane background color? (although I guess it'll change that for the whole VS IDE)
Thanks all.
Feature manifest preview, unselected:
Feature manifest preview, selected:
In the end I've found a workaround for this ... for whoever (?) might care.
Download Visual Studio Color Theme Editor extension.
If you need help choosing some specific UI color, download any desktop color picker tool, i.e. Just Color Picker.
From a VS SharePoint project, open some Feature manifest or Package manifest preview so to apply and check the ongoing results.
From within VS, create a new custom theme based on Default. Sort the items by name and look for the couple ProjectDesignerBackgroundGradientBegin/End.
Change both to some darker color, like 475B7E.
This is how it looks like:
Being a Dark Theme sort of guy I've settled on using the Visual Studio 2012 Dark Theme for Visual Studio 2010 which provides a great new look for VS2010.
You'll also need to install the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor and then import the [VS2012-Dark-for-2010.vstheme] file using the Theme, Customize Colors..., Import Theme meu options.