Metro Style Icon Studio

Metro Style Icon Studio is a powerful and easy-to-use icon editor that allows you to design icons, find, extract, create icon and cursor images, and manage icon libraries and image lists.

Main features:

– Manage icons, static and animated cursors, icon libraries, image lists
– Create and edit smooth semi-transparent icons, static and animated cursors for Windows 8, 7, XP
– Create and edit icons in standard and custom sizes, with color depth up to 32-bit True Color
– Paint images with gradient and chess fill
– Create Metro-style and Aero-style icons
– Create multi-layer images
– Modify images with a variety of effects: drop shadow, opacity, smooth, negative, grayscale, colorize, rotate, roll and mirror
– Import and export ICO, ICNS, BMP, JPEG, ANI, CUR, GIF, PNG, TGA, WMF, WBMP, XPM, XBM and Adobe Photoshop PSD image formats
– Work with Mac OS Leopard 512×512 pixels icons
– Manage icon libraries for better and more efficient image storage
– Extract icons from Windows executables, libraries and animated cursor files, ZIP and RAR archives
– Download icons from the Internet
– Search for icons in folders
– Modify icons contained inside executables
– Convert or apply effects to multiple icons at once

I normally don’t post about 3rd part software or giveaways but I’m really impressed with Syncfusion’s new Metro Studio product after downloading it today (registration required). It’s includes 600 free icons and you can easily customize the icons. I don’t know how long the free offering will last but it’s worth registering to get a key while it’s available (nobody from Syncfusion asked me to post about the program by the way – I just liked it). Here’s what the program looks like (very Metro-ish):

Once you download and install Metro Studio you’ll have access to all of the icons in various categories. That’s fantastic if you’re not super artistic like me since the more icons I have access to the better. What really surprised me though was the editor that’s included in Metro studio since it lets you change things like the size of the icon, padding, shape, background color, and even icon color. Everything can be done visually without having to be a graphics guru….pretty impressive.

Needless to say, I’m impressed. I’ve come across a lot of icon packages, but the level of customization provided and ease of use makes this little utility stand above anything else I’ve seen and lets non-graphics guys like me get different icons going quickly and easily. I don’t know anyone involved with creating the utility, but I’m really liking it and appreciate the free offer.