Now with full Macintosh icon support!
Published on June 28, 2005 By lilstarfish In WinCustomize News
Axialis has finally released the long awaited update to their famous IconWorkshop application.

• New interface - New look, more dynamic.

• Full Macintosh® icon support - Now you can create icons for the Macintosh®. You're able to make, read, convert icons and save them as ICNS, RSC and BIN (MacBinary). All icon formats are supported up to OSX 10.4 Tiger. The new 256x256 image format is also supported. This is not an export-to-mac feature but a full implementation of the Macintosh® icon format specification in all features of the product.

• Batch conversion of icons from Windows® to Macintosh® - A very handy feature which will permit you to convert hundreds of Windows icons to Macintosh in minutes.

• Batch creation of Macintosh® icons from images - Select several images and create associated Macintosh icons, with all formats embedded, in a few seconds.

• Icon normalization - This feature permits you to create a set of icons with identical image formats embedded. This is very useful especially if you want to publish icons.

• Macintosh Icontainer® libraries support - This version permits to extract icons from Macintosh Icontainer® icon libraries. Multi-state Mac icons are also supported.

• Composition of icons using drag & drop - You'll create original icons from a library of symbols in minutes: Select the objects (disk, folder, screen...) in the librarian and drag them using the mouse in the icon editor window. Resize and move it using the mouse then repeat the operation to add other overlay symbols in your icon. You've done your own icon in seconds!

• Real time preview in Brightness, Hue, Saturation dialogs - A very handy feature which permits you to adjust icons with precision.

• Full support of JPEG 2000 - This is the future format for raster icons. It has a better compression ration than PNG (can be set with lossy compression like JPEG) and support alpha channels. It has been completely included in all features of the product (load/save/export/convert).

• Full support of GIF - CompuServe GIF image format is widely used in Web pages because the majority of Web browsers recognize it. It has been completely included in all features of the product (load/save/export/convert) with Web-optimization options.

• Better image quality in image resizing and blending - Now crystal clear results in all scale/blending operations!

• New sample icons - Some icon artists gave us permissions to include their icons in the product as samples. You can enjoy these icons for your personal desktop use. Do not use them in products, they're copyrighted - see Sample Icons Terms of Use topic.

• Free object library - In librarian, select the Objects folder and you'll find many images and symbols that you can use freely to make your icons. What a pleasure to compose your icons using drag & drop.

• Some minor bug fixes.


Information on how to get your upgrade can be found on their forum:
http://www.axialis.net/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=000023

Comments
on Jun 28, 2005
...
on Jun 28, 2005
the news is back. yay. I was perusing at work and when I came back it was gone.
i needed the link cuz i can never remember how to spell axialis.
on Jun 28, 2005
a-x-i-a-l-i-s .... Spell checker
on Jun 28, 2005
c-u-t a-n-d p-a-s-t-e...
on Jun 29, 2005
atlast they released an update, the last personal version 5.03 came in 2002, 3 years back & I started making icons in it only, this is a definate value for money app, even 5.03 was perfect
on Jun 29, 2005
Thanks for the heads-up.

Definitely a nice update.
on Jun 29, 2005
looks good...upgraded. Nothing in the Axialis folders, nothing using Librarian....hmmm.
on Jun 30, 2005
lo werewolf

In the forums Dave noted that when going through the
tutorials the Objects folder mentioned there didn't
exist in his updated version.

I checked and found that it didn't exist in mine either.

He then wrote that after downloading the full install
the Objects folder was now there. I did the same and
found not only the Objects folder but also other things
like many new icons etc.

I believe Axialis will have the same stuff in the
updater too shortly
on Jun 30, 2005
thanks for the info lilstarfish.
on Jun 30, 2005
This is one of the programs I can't live without....