Opening and saving files
Greenfish Icon Editor Pro can currently open and save in ICO, CUR, PNG, XPM, BMP and JPEG formats.
Here is a short description about the mentioned formats and when to use them:
- The ICO and CUR formats are the only file types which can store multiple
image formats in any color depth,
i.e. preserving all the information your document contains. Greenfish Icon Editor Pro
can compress 256x256 formats stored in these files using PNG compression to reduce file size,
but it is not recognized by OS's older than Vista(tm) and most of the resource compilers.
Thus, this compression can be toggled using File | Use PNG compression before saving.
- The PNG format is the ideal solution when saving only a single image format.
It handles all color depths and produces small-sized files which can be distributed over the Web.
Tip: use the PNG format instead of ICO when creating so-called favicons for
homepages. It can reduce file size.
- The XPM format is mainly used on Linux platforms. It is an interesting file format which
can even be edited in text editors. It supports transparency, but
it cannot store 32-bit images and storing 24-bit images in XPM files can increase the file size very much.
Therefore, Greenfish Icon Editor Pro allows keeping only at most 256 colors when saving to XPM.
This does not present a big image quality loss, though.
- The BMP format does not support transparency and is always uncompressed.
The PNG format is recommended instead.
- The JPEG format does not support transparency and has a lossy compression method.
It is excellent when saving photos but far not suitable for icons.
You should not save your drawings in JPEG, it is recommended only importing JPEG files.