IconEdit personalizes your Workbench by changing the appearance of existing icons and creating new ones.
The window shown in Figure 10-2 appears when you open the IconEdit icon.
IconEdit Window
Draw and edit icons in the magnified view box of the IconEdit window. The Normal and Selected view boxes show the icon images at actual size. Several gadgets in the window draw squares, circles, and straight lines, giving you more control over your drawing.
There are three subwindows in IconEdit: the Normal and Selected view boxes and the Magnified View Box, which fills most of the window. Each of these is an AppWindow into which you can drag an icon to load it, rather than using menus. (AppWindows are described in Chapter 3.) Clicking in the Normal view box displays the selected image of the icon as long as you hold down the selection button.
The Color Selection gadget lets you select a color for drawing. In addition to the standard method for selecting a color by pointing to it and clicking the selection button, this gadget allows you to choose two-color patterns. The patterns are used with the Fill, filled Circle, and filled Box gadgets.
In order to use fill patterns you need to select the first color by left-clicking on it. After that keep the Shift key depressed and select the second color. The gadget bar with the different fill patterns will change its appearance accordingly, giving a simple preview on the two-color patterns.
Below the color selection gadget there is the Transparent gadget. Selecting a color from the palette and clicking on Transparent" afterward will make this color invisible" when the icon is saved to disk. Clicking on the Transparent gadget a second time using the same color will deactivate transparency.
Use the mouse to draw your icon in this box. Click the selection button to display a pixel of the selected color. Hold down the selection button to draw while moving the mouse.
The pointer turns into cross hairs when it is in the magnified view box. The new pixels appear a the center of the cross hairs. Pixel coordinates (relative to the upper left corner) appear in the middle of the IconEdit window below the title bar to show the position of the crosshair.
To load an existing icon into IconEdit, drag the icon into the magnified view box.
These gadgets allow you to select the fill pattern to be used with filled rectangles, filled circles and the flood fill tool.
The Freehand gadget lets you quickly draw unstructured shapes. If you select this gadget and then draw in the magnified view box, the pixels fill in as the mouse passes over them. However, you may not get a continuous line and some pixels may not be filled in. Use this gadget to sketch an icon that you intend to fill in the details on later.
The Continuous Freehand gadget is similar to the freehand gadget, except that it produces a continuous line. When drawing continuous lines, there is a delay before the display catches up with your movement.
Follow the steps for drawing normal circles to draw a filled circle or ellipse, using the current fill pattern.
If you keep the Shift key depressed while drawing the box, a true square will be drawn instead.
To draw a three-dimensional box, similar in appearance to the Workbench gadgets, hold down an Alt key while drawing a box outline. The left and top border of the box will then be drawn using the current color while the right and bottom borders will be drawn using the color currently selected as the second color for fill patterns.
Follow the steps for drawing a normal box in order to draw a filled box or square using the current fill pattern.
Use the fill gadget to fill an area of the magnified view box with the selected color. Select the fill gadget, then click within the area you want to change to the same color as the dot under the crosshair.
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The fill gadget does not fill a patterned area. However, solid areas can be filled with one of the fill patterns, if selected. |
Select Undo to cancel the last mouse action performed in the magnified view box. Undo acts as a toggle switch; selecting it again undoes the Undo.
Select Redo to cancel the last undo action, effectively restoring the state the magnified view box was in before calling undo.
Select the Clear gadget to erase the contents of the magnified view box. The magnified view box fills with the currently selected color.
The Normal and Selected radio buttons switch between unselected and selected images for an icon. The normal image is how an unselected icon looks. The selected image is how a dual-image icon looks after you have clicked on it.
When the Normal radio button is selected, any image drawn in the magnified view box appears in the normal view box at the top of the window.
When the Selected radio button is used, you can create the image that appears when the icon is selected. You can only use this radio button when the Image menu item is chosen from the Highlight menu. Any image created appears in the selected view box.
