Publishing Loose Icons

Hello,

I believe those should be okay. But, it also best to mention those sizes in your Description so users know what they're getting. Also if loose icons, it best to put them under "Icons" category : https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/icons/search/

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

I am looking forward to seeing them. The sizes should be good.

For me personally, Icons customization has been making a comeback with how I use them with Start 11. Super easy to change them as I have a whole folder now just for tiles / icons which I use for the windows 11 theme. I know there is still a demand for more traditional icon customization as well as everyone uses their pc differently. This is just how I am using them.

It's basically up to you. I've just done a set which has 256, 96, 64, 48, 32, 24 and 16 resolutions, based on some info from the web...

Extra Large Icons – 256 x 256 pixels
Large Icons – 96 x 96 pixels
Medium Icons – 48 x 48 pixels
Small Icons – 16 x 16 pixels
List – 16 x 16 pixels
Details – 16 x 16 pixels
Tiles – 48 x 48 pixels
Content – 32 x 32 pixels

Also...

Application icons and Control Panel items: The full set includes 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, and 256x256 (code scales between 32 and 256). The .ico file format is required. For Classic Mode, the full set is 16x16, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48 and 64x64.

List item icon options: Use live thumbnails or file icons of the file type (for example, .doc); full set.
Toolbar icons: 16x16, 24x24, 32x32. Note that toolbar icons are always flat, not 3D, even at the 32x32 size.

Dialog and wizard icons: 32x32 and 48x48.

Overlays: Core shell code (for example, a shortcut) 10x10 (for 16x16), 16x16 (for 32x32), 24x24 (for 48x48), 128x128 (for 256x256). Note that some of these are slightly smaller but are close to this size, depending on shape and optical balance.

Quick Launch area: Icons will scale down from 48x48 in Alt+Tab dynamic overlays, but for a more crisp version, add a 40x40 to .ico file.

Balloon icons: 32x32 and 40x40.

Additional sizes: These are useful to have on hand as resources to make other files (for example, annotations, toolbar strips, overlays, high dpi, and special cases): 128x128, 96x96, 64x64, 40x40, 24x24, 22x22, 14x14, 10x10, and 8x8. You can use .ico, .png, .bmp, or other file formats, depending on code in that area.

Thanks for your reply. I have found that on Windows 10 with an icon that only includes the 256x256 32 bit size scales automatically to fit all the views mentioned above. Is it really necessary to include all the different sizes in the icon? I do have a 4K monitor, so maybe that makes a difference?

Thanks, Tim! 👍👍

Well that's open to opinion and whether your eyes can tell the difference. When you take a 256x256 image and rescale it to 16x16 it definitely affects the quality. All my lower res icons end up with blurred outlines - 32, 24 and 16 - and that's why the format of an icon allows you to include separate images in the file. I hated the rescaled versions of my 256 icons and redid them for all the other resolutions so that all the lines were good at all the resolutions.

 Here's how rescaled versions of the 256x256 icon (on the left) looked compared to the individually created versions (on the right)... These are 256 rescaled to 48, 32, 24 and 16px. 

This is a better comparison. And maybe most people find the rescaled ones perfectly acceptable.. 

Thank you for these comparisons. I agree that individual sizing is better on some icons, but OS scaled sizing is okay on others. Microsoft includes 256x256-32, 64x64-32, 48x48-32, 40x40-32, 32x32-32, 24x24-32, 20x20-32, and 16x16-32 sizes with their system icons. I recently updated the Text icon by replacing the white paper with canary and the gray ruled lines with blue. Allowing the OS to scale down from 256x256-32 results in unacceptable results. I had to go in and recreate the different sizes to get the ruled lines to look right. However, on your example of the This PC icon, I can't really see the difference on my 4K monitor.