I've been trying to make an icon that has transparency. I've tried Axialis but the documentation is crummy and the ui is somewhat inscrutable. Everytime I think I've figured out how to set transparency, it's coming in with white space. MS documenation mentions using magenta as the background, so I also tried that and got transparency but at the price of a pink halo. I've tried a Photoshop plugin and it came out correctly but I can't figure out how to stuff multiple sizes in there.
This must be a common problem and yet Google is not being my friend.
Answer
Just use GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/). Start off with a transparent background and the size you would like. I use it for all my Android applications.