We all know that Photoshop, Illustrator, and CorelDraw are good image editors for creating icons, but what most people don't know is that Microsoft Word 2007 can be a decent icon creation tool as well. I believe that it's a great tool for those who are new at creating icons, because:
A) Many people are familiar with MS Office
The graphics tools are easy to use and understand
C) The 2007 version of Office has significantly revamped it's graphics handling capabilities, compared to it's predecessors.
In fact, most of my skins including my icons, calendars, and right-click skins I have submitted so far on WinCustomize have been made with a combination of MS Word 2007 and Paint.NET.
So what makes Word so special, apart from other image editors? I have a list of features of what Word can do that many people don't realize:
Word supports Vector imaging: This is the single most important thing to know about Word's graphics handling capabilities. All lines, shapes, WordArt, ClipArt, and Images are vectorized. Vector images retain information within an image such as calculations. These calculations determine the position, rotation, and size of an image. Vector images can be resized without ANY loss of quality. All imported images are converted from raster images to vector images. Raster Images are bitmapped images, such as BMPs, JPGs, GIFs, and PNGs.
Has a large workspace: Most image files are set to a certain size in pixels. (i.e. 1024x768 for a wallpaper, 256x256 for an icon, etc.) In Word, there is no set file size. And you can zoom in up to 500% for a massive workspace. (Although scrolling is required at such high levels of zoom.) And zooming in will NOT deteriorate the quality of ANY image, because they are vector images. In fact, zooming in at higher percentages allows objects to have more precise rotations, scaling, and detail.
Word supports Layers: Word supports object grouping and ordering, which is important for creating icons with multiple layers. ANY shape object you create can be enhanced by adding a gradient, pattern, transparency, and even an image fill. Word makes it easy to create adjustment layers without changing the acutal pixel data of another image. By grouping many shape objects together, you can create objects such as logos, cursors, irregular shapes, and more.
Saving a Word document can retain multiple images: Word can hold as many objects as your computer's memory can handle. However, when you save a word document, all of the images are embedded inside the document, meaning that the actual images are not saved as seperate images. To save stand-alone images, you'll need to use the printscreen key and another image editor (such as Paint.NET or Photoshop) to crop & save your icon selections as PNGs or ICO files. Note that whenever you hit the printscreen key, the snapshot rasterizes and flattens all of the image data into a single raster image, so objects and layers will become flattened, so be careful when exporting images to another editor.
And that's just the half of it. If you are experienced with using Paint.NET, Photoshop, or other image editors, you can add AMAZING effects to your icons, such as glow, blurring, reflections, 3D rendering, additional layers, and the list goes on.
Overall, Word does an OK job with graphics by itself, but if you have the expreience, I would stick with CorelDraw or Photoshop instead. It's great to not only think different, but also to be different.
