CIs and Icons

[eddierocks2000]

What is the best program for making add-on CIs, and Icons?

[Ad Bot]

[Blastdown]

GIMP or Photoshop are my choices when making such things.
Some may suggest Paint.net as well, but I've never used it so I can't say how handy it is.

[Devvy]

Paint.net is just a toned down version of GIMP, works just as well.

[Demian]

Anything that is capable of pixel art and saving as PNG.

[KoopaScooper]

Anything that is capable of pixel art, transparency and saving as PNG.

[Red Cube]

Anything that is capable of pixel art and saving as PNG.

So Seashore for Mac then.

[mntbrrychch]

I use Paint.NET for mine, but I have never tried the others that people suggest.

[Striker150]

Vectors are the way to go.
by personal opinion that is.

Vectors are clean and there isn't any degrading or pixels when you work with it.
you can zoom in, depending on the program, to about 6400x without seeing any pixilation.

inkscape is a great free vector editor, it takes a little practice.
but once you get into it, you'll never look back.
_____

if you are a fan of bitmaps, then i'd recommend you to gimp or photoshop

as for other 'for pay' editors, i'd take a look at pixelmator. pixelmator is a micro-app that is taking the designer world by storm.

Adobe products are still at the top and prolly always will be. they are the industry standard. Illustrator, Fireworks for vectors, and photoshop for bitmaps.

the learning curve for all of these graphics editors is a little rough. if you are struggling, head over the the tuts+ network.

Photoshop Tuts
Vector Tuts

Happy designing

<edit : Added More Resources / More Bitmap editors >

[Demian]

Vectors are the way to go.

You still have to scale it down to some really tiny size and it has to be a bitmap anyways. So it will be pixelated because its small. It's irrelevant whether you do a vector or just straight ahead pixel art.

[Striker150]

You still have to scale it down to some really tiny size and it has to be a bitmap anyways. So it will be pixelated because its small. It's irrelevant whether you do a vector or just straight ahead pixel art.

this is true, but because you are working on such a small artboard, it's important to be able to zoom in without deterioration. also, some vector programs (both illustrator and inkscape do this) allow you to shift to decimals of pixels, and with anti-aliasing to a soft edge, it will make the graphics much more 'crisp'

this is all opinion of course, I feel it's better to work with vectors for CI's so you can zoom in. if you only have __ < 32 pixels to work with, for example, i feel it's important to see what you are doing up close.