AROS Vanilla x86-64

[miker1264]

I was painting some new colored folder icons for AROS Vanilla.

I wasn't satisfied with using the 'Home' icon for the Workspace. So I hand painted a new one using a blueprint & pencil.

The folder icons are 46x46 with an image size of 42x42. They will have a 2x2 glow border to make them appear slightly larger than project icons.

I may not use all of them. I'm just making lots of them. I will post the icon collections when I finish them if anyone wants to try them.

The Vanilla Icons look nice! A few done, but hundreds more to go. 

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Making Icons is hard work especially if you have to get transparent and quality images, on AROS One the Folder Icons are 780, then consider that I created 4 styles for a total of 3.128 Folder Icons

Usually when you reduce images there is a loss of quality, I usually to have no loss of quality I use as "Zoom" the Windows folder, which in the reduction (mouse wheel) reduces with less loss of quality.

The best trick to resize images is to cut/paste by shortening and tightening the images, this greatly decreases the loss of quality.

[miker1264]

Making Icons is hard work especially if you have to get transparent and quality images, on AROS One the Folder Icons are 780, then consider that I created 4 styles for a total of 3.128 Folder Icons

Usually when you reduce images there is a loss of quality, I usually to have no loss of quality I use as "Zoom" the Windows folder, which in the reduction (mouse wheel) reduces with less loss of quality.

The best trick to resize images is to cut/paste by shortening and tightening the images, this greatly decreases the loss of quality.

Indeed it is hard work. It requires many hours to produce quality icons. It's not easy to find or make graphics which scale nicely and look good at icon dimensions. Some need to be "stylized" to make them into an approximation of the real images. The icons are merely symbolic representation of everyday objects or tasks. The more color, the better!

Once I get a complete set of icons that I like I can use HSL Color Rotation to produce more color variations. Overlay masking is useful for automatically copying the images to new colored folder icons. Automation is good. 

The folder icons will be slightly larger than project icons for visual effects. The project icons are just 46x46 squared Icons usually with a white background but colors vary. I wanted the project icons to be drop-in replacement for PNG Glow Icons such as Kens Icons. They are interchangeable.

The icons that I'm developing for AROS are heavily influenced by the look and feel of early Mac OS X icons, especially the powder blue folder icons. But the graphics also resemble the Faenza Icons for Linux. But as far as I know Faenza are only single PNG or SVG images and they are much larger and different than 46x46 PNG Glow Icons.

Like AROS which has one foot in the past with its Amiga roots and an eye towards the future with a synthesis of things classic and things modern so are the new icons. The PNG icons are modern in appearance but they will be influenced by Classic Amiga Glow Icons from OS3.5/3.9 and especially the visual style of AIAB ( Amiga In A Box ) which used Scalos.

[cdimauro]

It's better to move to a .svgz image so that icon sizes aren't a problem anymore (since those compressed SVG images can be scaled to whatever resolution. IF they are made with good quality).

[miker1264]

It's better to move to a .svgz image so that icon sizes aren't a problem anymore (since those compressed SVG images can be scaled to whatever resolution. IF they are made with good quality).

That's a good point for a future direction. We can load and save SVG images but I don't think Icon Library can load the SVG icons. Not yet at least.

The problem with an SVG based icon is that's there's no place to store the icon data itself. In PNG icons they use an icOn chunk. Classic Icons store icon attributes in the diskobject data, etc. But SVG would have to be a hybrid icon. Classic Amiga Icon File at the beginning. Where the IFF data for a Glow Icon would normally be is instead the beginning of the SVG data. How many images can it store?

Those are things we would have to investigate.

[cdimauro]

It's better to move to a .svgz image so that icon sizes aren't a problem anymore (since those compressed SVG images can be scaled to whatever resolution. IF they are made with good quality).

That's a good point for a future direction. We can load and save SVG images but I don't think Icon Library can load the SVG icons. Not yet at least.

Yup. It should be updated.

The problem with an SVG based icon is that's there's no place to store the icon data itself. In PNG icons they use an icOn chunk. Classic Icons store icon attributes in the diskobject data, etc. But SVG would have to be a hybrid icon. Classic Amiga Icon File at the beginning. Where the IFF data for a Glow Icon would normally be is instead the beginning of the SVG data. How many images can it store?

Those are things we would have to investigate.

I don't see the problem: those SVGZ icons should be treated like the PNG ones.


SVG is a very flexible format because it allows to embed vector, bitmap and text content, and transformations / filters / animations, so you don't even need to define something like dual PNGs (one SVG should be enough to emulate it).


And to answer to your last question, SVG allows to define metadata of any kind, that can be used to store the icon attributes (and much more). You can add those tags everywhere (AFAIR), so even at beginning of the XML data (this can be "forced" as a requirement for those new icons, if it's needed).
Here are the specs: https://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/metadata.html

[AMIGASYSTEM]

The folder icons will be slightly larger than project icons for visual effects.

Attention. on AROS icons with different sizes result in misalignment and clutter among icons, already square icons at the same size as Round icons, will look largie.

Also, folders that have edges or protrusions such as handles will appear smaller, this is why I used different sizes for Icon Sets.

[miker1264]

The folder icons will be slightly larger than project icons for visual effects.

Attention. on AROS icons with different sizes result in misalignment and clutter among icons, already square icons at the same size as Round icons, will look largie.

Also, folders that have edges or protrusions such as handles will appear smaller, this is why I used different sizes for Icon Sets.

Ah. I'm aware of misalignment issues with icons.

That's why all my icons are 46x46. It's just the image area that changes. Folder image area is 42x42 but regular icon image area just like other AROS Glow Icons is 38x38.

[miker1264]

For Vanilla Icons rather than the subdued powder blue icons reminiscent of Mac OS X I've decided to go a different route.

Vanilla Icons will be bright and colorful. I started with a forest green icon that I hand painted pixel by pixel in a paint program. Then I applied HSL Color Rotation to produce several color variations. So far I like med blue and med green folder icons.

Let's see how they look on Workbench. 

[AMIGASYSTEM]

They are nice, maybe a little small for AROS, great on the other hand for OS3

[miker1264]

They are nice, maybe a little small for AROS, great on the other hand for OS3

Ken's Icons that are used on Icaros are 46x46 also and they look great. The image area of the drawer icons is less that 38x38 so they look a little small to me.

As far as size comparison I copied a few icons to AROS One. The PNG def icon on the right is part of AROS One x86. The Prefs folder icon is new.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Okay, I thought they turned out smaller, a good look !

[miker1264]

Okay, I thought they turned out smaller, a good look !

I actually like the powder blue icon on AROS One.

The icon in the earlier screenshot was medium blue.

For some reason it looks good. So I produced pastel colors.

The numbers in the filename are HSL Rotation Values.

[miker1264]

Recently I fixed my Native version of IcarosDesktop 2.2.8 which can now boot correctly in VirtualBox. I had a corrupted picture.datatype that I reloaded from Live DVD.

The Native version is so much nicer than Hosted on Linux. For some reason the X11 driver is very unstable for Hosted

But now I can get back to enjoying Icaros x86 & testing. 
I have to test IconClone & other software on IcarosDesktop.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I will have some new icons & window themes ready for IcarosDesktop. The icons are just additional & not intended as replacement icons.   

[AMIGASYSTEM]

I am curious to see your Themes, are you using the Theme Editor?