Import picture as icon

You can import an existing picture file as a new icon image. When you select "File|Convert picture to icon" or in the icon editor, you click "Import a picture as image", you are prompted to select the picture file you want to import.

GConvert natively supports importing icon files (.ico), bitmaps (.bmp), Portable Network Graphic files (.png), Adobe� Photoshop� files (.psd), Macintosh� icon files (.rsrc & .icns), mouse cursor files (.cur). Thanks to plug-ins, several other image formats may be imported too, like GIF and JPEG.

When you have selected your file and confirmed your choice, GConvert will load it and then display the following large window called "Import Picture":

First of all, you can see the imported image on the left in the white area. There is a rectangle with small boxes which indicates the current image selection. This rectangle may be moved and resized using the small boxes at the different corners. If these corners are not visible, just click the picture to give them the focus.

On the right, there are three option boxes and two buttons which are Create Icon and Cancel. Pressing Create Icon actually causes GConvert to import the portion of the image selected inside the rectangle and to convert it to the new icon image.

The "Selection Box Controls" box contains four fields,  a button and the view scale. The two fields on the left contains the two coordinates (x,y) of the left-top corner of the selection rectangle. The two remaining fields on the right contains the width and the height of the selection rectangle. All of these four fields are in pixels. You can manually enter the numbers (integers only) directly in the four fields or use the rectangle box to adjust the selection. Note that the values of the fields are automatically updated.

Press the "Select All" button to automatically adjust the rectangle selection to the size of the imported image. By default GConvert will always adjust the selection to the size of the imported image.

The "Scale" come box lets you set the scale of the image viewer. It is especially useful if you want to import a small part of a large picture for instance.

The "New Icon Options" box offers you several options regarding the new icon image which is about to be created. It is divided into two tabs:

The Image Size tab lets you define the size of the new icon image & how the imported image will be copied/resized in order to fit the new icon dimensions:

When the Image Size tab is active, the last box called "Resized Image Preview" shows you the image after it was resized or copied according to your settings. It's not a preview of your icon as no color transformation was applied at this time.

After that, you switch to the Colors & Transparency tab. You can configure the color depth of your future icon image & how GConvert will apply some color transformations if necessary.

When the Colors & Transparency tab is active, the new icon image is shown in the preview box. This is a real preview of the new icon image as it will appear once it has been created:

Finally press "Create Icon" to continue. The new icon image will be created according to your options and then placed in the icon currently edited in the icon editor.

Note that if there is already an icon image with the same size & color depth as the new icon image, you will be first prompted whether to overwrite the existing one or cancel your import.

Hint: you can drag and drop existing image files directly on GConvert; the latter will immediately load them and show you the "Import Picture" dialog box.


Overview of the icon editor

What is an icon?

About plug-ins