As you can see, applications with an extra large Windows 7 icon stand out and look much better than applications with a standard icon. Somewhat surprisingly Google Chrome is one these (this is probably due to company politics rather than lethargy) If you only have a Windows XP Icon for your app, Windows 7 just renders it in the middle of a white box.
Ok, So how can 3D Box Shot Pro help?
One thing you may have noticed if you’ve tried to the demo of 3D Box Shot Pro is it has some rather nice thumbnail images of the packaging types it contains. These were actually made in 3D Box Shot Pro. As well as exporting massive print quality images of up to 67 mega pixels in resolution, the rendering engine can also create beautiful anti-aliased thumbnail images. The thumbnail images in 3D Box Shot Pro are actually 64 x 64 in size. It’s 8 x Anti aliasing that 3D Box Shot Pro applies that makes them look as good as they do at 64 x 64.
One simple and easy option to avoid the graphics design headache of making an icon specifically for Windows 7 is you use your applications box shot as an icon. All you need to do is setup a scene in 3D Box Shot Pro exactly how you like it, then export an image from the program at 256 x 256. Don’t forget to select a transparent background.
Once you’ve saved the .PNG image from 3D Box Shot Pro, it’s time to turn it into an .ico icon file. The application we’re going to use to do this is called icofx. This is a freeware product you can download from:
http://icofx.ro/
Once you’ve loaded it in, you just need to convert the image to a Windows Icon and export it as an .ico file. You can then use this icon for your installer icon and as your main application icons. Changing the installer icon is a fairly trivial process in most installers. For example, in Inno Setup (the installer we use at Jellypie Software) you just need to add the following line to your install script:
