Preparing the Image

Linda Cole

August 3, 1999

Favicon specs:
16 x 16 pixels
256 color?
1046 bytes

Before you can begin, you'll need some tools to work with. You'll need a graphics program to either create a new logo or edit an existing logo. It's not important which graphics program you use, so long as it will let you resize your image.

You'll also need an icon program. I'm not even going to pretend to know all there is to know about programs that will generate icons... I don't. I'm not 'into' icons. As a general rule I don't create them (although I made an exception for the favicon.ico), and have only used one icon program. If you fall into this category, I would recommend using Icon Forge for your creation. It's fairly idiot proof; if I could make an icon, anyone can. This article is going to assume you followed my lead and used this program. For those of you more knowledgeable, you may create your icon with what ever icon program you have at hand.

If you don't have a logo, or any image you want to use, and are only in need of a simple icon, it can be created directly in Icon Forge without the need of an additional graphics program. Some of the icon generating programs have some cool built in effects which can transform even a single letter into a great icon. As an example, the four icons below began life as the letter "W" typed in an Arial font. Various effects were then applied to get the resulting icon.

Be warned, 16x16 is a mighty small area to work in, and while you can always work in a larger size, it still needs to be shrunk to 16x16 which may make your masterpiece illegible. As you can see in the three examples below, the simpler the image, the more legible it is at the reduced size.