Create application icon

In this article we will review how to facilitate the creation of an application icon.

The software to use for that is Icon-O-Matic for sure, however I will explain how to have a quick draft icon to start with.

Standard way

Let's suppose you want to create an icon for the NetBeans application.

For that, you can check the existing logo available at the NetBean_Logo page as below :

Then you can start to create the icon manually with Icon-O-Matic as explained in Using Icon-O-Matic article in the "hard way" paragraph.

Now, would it be nice to have a draft logo to start with directly in Icon-O-Matic ?

Yes, but how ?!

I will detail the process in the next paragraph :)

Optimized way

First download the NetBean PNG logo file available in the previous NetBeans logo page.

Then in your favorite browser, go to the following website : https://www.png2svg.com

Upload the PNG :

Great !

Now your logo is converted in SVG format which is recognized by Icon-O-Matic.

Open the SVG file in Icon-O-Matic with the "Open with" pop-up menu :

In the case of NetBeans, the logo has been converted to SVG without too much paths meaning the quality was good :

However, in most cases, you will have to remove unnecessary paths and to enhance the draft icon to a better looking version. But before that, export the icon to HVIF format :

Then open the HVIF version and start to enhance the paths / the shapes / the styles (colors) in Icon-O-Matic:

This manual step can take minutes or hours, however if the quality of the starting icon is good enough, it should save you some time :)

You can also check the great Haiku icon guidelines page to learn the best practices to create icons on Haiku.

Once you're happy with your changes, save your file.

If you want to test how the icon looks like, you can attach it to a copy of StyledEdit like below :

cp /system/apps/StyleEdit /boot/home/Desktop
seticon /boot/home/Downloads/Apache_netBeans_Logo.hvif /boot/home/Desktop/StyleEdit

In case you haven't created the "seticon" function as explained in the "Attach icon to app" article, then use instead :

addattr -f /boot/home/Downloads/Apache_netBeans_Logo.hvif -t icon BEOS:ICON /boot/home/Desktop/StyleEdit

You can add this copy of StyleEdit to LaunchBox and change the LaunchBox icons size to the biggest format, to review the quality of your icon:

Nice result, isn't it ? Launch also the program to check how the icon looks like in the Deskbar :

I hope this process will facilitate the creation of your applications' icons under Haiku.

If you have liked this article, you can put a like or a comment below :)