IconBuilder Pro 8 is a Photoshop plug-in which allows you to professionally create icons for Windows, Mac OS X, favicons, and images. IconBuilder by itself is not a newcomer, but version 8 improves so many aspects of this venerable plug-in that it’s almost a new program altogether.

IconBuilder Pro 8 is a software solution developed by the IconFactory, the company that creates stock icons and has a large collection of free icon sets as well. The IconFactory probably is one of the, if not the oldest group of people who professionally create icons for a living.

IconBuilder is their tool, together with Macromedia Freehand and Photoshop, of course. Version 8 is a rather radical move away from previous versions in that it contains many more features than its predecessors. It starts with the concept.

With IconBuilder Pro 8 you start creating your icons as usual --drawing them on a napkin and then scanning them in, or drawing them in Illustrator or Freehand, or even photographing your object, masking it, and adjusting its size inside Photoshop.

Once you’ve done your preparatory work, you must import your artwork in Photoshop. The icon building process itself starts here, with a grid template that comes with IconBuilder Pro 8. There are more templates to choose from than in previous versions. There is a template for Windows icons, Mac OS X icons, a toolbar arrangement, and an expanded grid with custom icon placements and sizes.

Taking a Mac OS X ison as an example, you open the appropriate template which has rectangles defining the limits of each icon resource, i.e. the biggest one being 128 pixels square and the smallest one being 16 pixels square. What you do first is drag your artwork to the largest rectangle, positioning it carefully in the middle.

With the IconBuilder Pro 8 plug-in (or filter if you wish) also comes a set of Photoshop Actions.

One of these is an action which will populate all the grid resources with their appropriate icon images. You started with an 128 pixel drawing and after a couple of seconds you end up with all the necessary measurements.

Now it’s time for IconBuilder Pro itself. After having selected the Photoshop layer with the artwork, the plug-in will launch and show you the template again, populated with your artwork in all the right sizes. Clicking the Left arrow will “copy” all the art into the appropriate resource rectangles at left.

Except for choosing the right template, and the corresponding resource options in IconBuilder, the job doesn’t require you to take any actions or make any decisions. This benefits creativity, as you don’t have to worry over technical details. This only holds true, however, when dealing with relatively easy projects. Once you start going into icon creation deeper, even IconBuilder Pro 8 can’t shield you from the technicalities.