IconLover 5.45

Overview

IconLover is a software for icon enthusiasts who want to create their own icons and graphics. It has a friendly user interface as well as several features that make this process an easy and enjoyable task, such as transparency settings, shadows, mirroring and support for layers. Since it gives you the ability to create graphics both for Windows and Mac OS systems, it also lets you convert them between these operating systems. Batch importing and exporting of icons is supported too.

Installation

You won’t have a problem installing this application because there aren’t many settings throughout the process, and even then they are already configured by default. In fact, the only step that needs configuration is the file association step. Pick the file extensions that you want to associate with IconLover and then proceed to the main installation step.

The program can run under any Windows OS.

Interface

When you launch IconLover, a small window will appear that asks you how you want to start using the program. You can create a new icon, create an icon from an image file, open an existing file (icon, cursor etc.), find icons on a folder, extract all icons from your computer, download icons from the internet or view the help file. If you don’t want this window to appear at startup and jump directly to the main window you can uncheck the checkbox at the bottom.

Once you’ve picked your selection, the main window will come to the foreground allowing you to work on your project. If you create an icon from an image file, another window will appear with some settings to adjust, such as color settings and size. The image will then appear in the main window with all editing tools available.

Pros

There is support not only for still images, but for animated ones too. You can create GIF images and edit them easily.

If you have created an image in another editing software and want to make an icon out of it, you can import it in IconLover and convert it into an icon. You can import and export files of the following file formats: ICO, BMP, JPEG, ANI, CUR, GIF, PNG, TGA, TIFF, WMF, WBMP, XPM, XBM and PSD.

IconLover supports icons up to 768x768px, just like Windows 10 does, plus PNG-encoded 1024x1024 Mac OS X icons.

Conversion between Windows (ICO) and Mac OS (ICNS) icons is applicable. You can import an ICO file and convert it into ICNS and vice-versa.

You can extract icons from Windows executables, libraries, cursors or archives and import them in IconLover directly.

Cons

It was a little slow when importing a large number of files, but it completed the task successfully. Besides, the speed actually depends on many factors and is not objective so you can't consider this as a true con anyways.

Alternatives

IcoFX (paid) is an icon editor very similar to IconLover. Most of the features are the same (e.g. the conversion feature between Windows and Mac OS) and their functionality is almost identical. IconWorkshop (paid) is a software different than those two, which is used to create, import, convert or extract icons without much hassle.

Conclusion

IconLover can be used not only by hobbyists, but by professionals as well. You will be surprised with what this neat program is capable of doing if you get used to working with it. If you want a great software to handle all your icon and graphic needs, this is definitely what you're looking for.