This will walk you through the process of creating a new icon with Icon Brush. You will see how to use the basic functionality and have an understanding of what makes up an icon.<P>
To start out, double click on the Icon Brush application program. A new window will open with several blank squares. These are the icon elements, pictures of various sizes and color depths, which are put together to make an icon. Double click on the 32x32 square in the center along the left side of the window. This creates an element of that size and depth and opens the <a href="editor.help">image editor</a>.<P>
A couple of new windows should now appear on your screen. They are the <B>Tool Palette</B> and the <B>Tool Options</B> window (if they don't show up, select them from the <B>Window</B> menu). The Tool Palette contains all of the image editing tools that you can use to draw your icon. When you click on a tool, the Tool Options window changes to show the options for that tool. To see a short description of each tool, click on the help button (marked with a "?") on the Tool Options window. Play around drawing in the icon editor with various tools to get a feel for what each one can do.<P>
The next set of editing capabilities are in the <B>Effects</B> menu. You can select from a variety of different effect which can be applied to your icon. Experiment with these for a few minutes. If you mess up, remember that you can use the <B>Undo</B> and <B>Redo</B> commands in the <B>Edit</B> menu.<P>
Once your picture is looking just right, click the close box on the Editor Window. You are now back to the Overview window and the icon element you just created appears in its corresponding box. You can drag it over to adjacent squares to fill in items more quickly. This way you can fill in all the 32x32 icons of various depths without re-drawing everything. Don't drag this image into the boxes in the <B>Mask</B> column, masks will be explained next.<P>
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You'll notice the <B>Masks</B> column on the far right of the Overview Window. Masks control which parts of an icon are clickable and which parts are visible. Specifically The 1-bit masks control which parts of an icon are clickable, and if supported by the system, the 8-bit masks control the degree of transparency of each pixel in the icon's image (black being opaque and white being transparent). The 8-bit masks are only supported under OS 8.5+ and only affect the 32-bit icon elements.<P>
Add a mask to your icon by double clicking the box on the right in the same row as the original image you just created. Fill in any areas you want to be visible with black (you can see a preview of this in the <B>Icon Window</B> which can be opened through the Window menu. Once you're done you can save your icon. First you need to select <B>Icon Settings</B> from the <B>Edit</B> menu. A dialog (or a sheet under OSX) pops up where you can control how your icon will be saved. Once finished, click <B>Ok</B> and then choose one of the various saving commands from the File menu.
