Icnctrl Help Contents
Icons Control Editor Help Contents

•	The toolbars

•	How to make any part of icon shows the background behind it (transparent)

•	How to turn the editing grid on or off?

•	How to change the color palette?


Tool bar
Editing toolbar

Free hand drawing tool

Line drawing tool

Box outline drawing tool

Box fill drawing tool

Circle outline drawing tool

Circle fill drawing tool

Flood fill drawing tool

Color probe tool

Save the current icon/bitmap

Undo last operation

Exit Editor


How to make any part of icon transparent
Some icons were created with a white opaque rectangle which covers everything under it.  To make this surrounding area or any part of an icon shows the background behind it (transparent):

1. Check the Transparent under Fill Type on the menu bar in the editing grid.

2. Click the flood fill tool and flood the part of icon you want to make transparent.

NOTE:

•	If you use the flood fill tool to make any part of an icon transparent, make sure that you click the mouse button which does NOT have same color with that part of the icon you want to make transparent.  For example: your left mouse color is blue and your right mouse color is red.  If you want to make a blue part of the icon transparent, after selecting Transparent under Fill Type you will have to click the right mouse button (red).

•	The transparent part of the actual icon is represented in black in the magnified icon for easy identification.  This is not a problem.  The actual pixel data will be saved correctly once you save the icon.

•	If you have problem using the flood fill tool then the file you are editing may not be Windows 3.1 icon format.  To verify this, check the file size of the icon (single click on the icon, the file size of the selected icon along with its dimension will be displayed in the menu caption), if it is not 766 bytes, then its probably not a standard VGA 32x32 Windows icon.

•	The transparent mode is only effective with the free-hand drawing and flood fill tools.

•	Transparent mode is only effective with 16-color icons.


Grid
The grid in the editing mode can be turned on or off by checking or unchecking Grid on the toolbar.  For heavy editing, I suggest you turn off the grid to prevent the flickering caused by the redisplaying of the grid after each operation.


How to change color palette
Each palette entry can be changed by double-clicking on the desired color square.  Doing this will bring up a standard Windows color menu.  You can either use the basic colors provided or use your own customed defined colors in Icons Control.