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RealWorld Icon Editor 2008.1 released
RealWorld Icon Editor 2008.1 released
Published by Vlasta on May 15th 2008.
New version of RealWorld Icon Editor brings support for ICL files, a redesigned raster editor with modern look and feel, mighty tools and handy filters, a seamlessly integrated system for file management with tags, and countless small changes and improvements.
What’s new?
RealWorld Icon Editor was built around a simple universal principle that was accurately expressed thousands of years ago by Aristotle: “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.” Version 2008.1 adds new parts and improves the old ones. Combine them in the right way and the result is almost alive.
Raster image editor
A good share of the 15 months since the last release was spent improving the image editing part of the application. The editor is now much better suited for preparing images for conversion to icons, for retouching of icons, and also for creating icons in image editor from scratch.
Many of the new features were never before available in any icon editor and some of them have never been used in any image editing software at all. Let’s name the most important ones:
- Arbitrary (not just rectangular) selections - actually masks, because there are 256 levels of “selected-ness” per pixel. Selections can be blurred.
- Sub-pixel precision - this is not just anti-aliasing for edge smoothing. Drawn shapes can be positioned with floating point precision, a feature normally seen only in vector image editors.
- Mouse gestures - users can invoke actions (tool change, application of filter, undo, …) by performing a mouse gesture.
- Rich tools - each tool can be configured. For example the LINE tool allows you to choose join and cap style, dashing pattern, and automatically close shape to create a polygon.
- Powerful scripting - the scripting subsystem is comparable to scripting in GIMP of Photoshop. For example the “Bevel” and “Background glow” filters or the “Create preview of icon” operations are scripted.
And that’s not all, there are many minor features like: pen pressure sensitive brush tool, ability to run filters compatible with Adobe Photoshop, modern look and feel with arbitrary (non-integral) zoom and live preview of outcome of every tool, cropping and retouching tools, configurable gradients for shape filling, batch processing, etc.
Icon libraries
Yeah, .icl files are supported. No big deal.
Tagged library
Authors, who create a lot of icons will have the option to store their files in a database and assign any number of tags to each file. Better than file-system and folders.
Online help
Application can only do things that the users can do. Having a good help system is a critical factor in the equation. RealWord Icon Editor has built-in tutorials, context help and document type specific tips. A new component of the help system is a online (continuously updated) detailed help powered by the mediawiki-like script.
Resources
Summary
Version 2008.1 of RealWorld Icon Editor is another step on the road to an integrated, functional, and user friendly solution for small graphics authors. The improvements in raster editor eliminate the need to prepare images or retouch generated icons in an external raster editor. The tagged storage provides a convenient way to manage your files and the support for icon libraries allows Windows GUI customizers to package their creations.
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