How To Create an Icon for Visual Studio with just MSPaint and Visual Studio

Question

I have been reading a lot of posts about creating icons and then assigning one of those icons in Visual Studio Project --> Properties --> Icon and Manifest. When I do this, I get a message that the icon is not valid. The primary way I have been doing this is using MSPaint.

This is when I save a 24-bit icon in MSPaint, which is mentioned in one of the posts I read. I cannot find any editing ability in the image editor of Visual Studio 2012. So, how does one create a simple icon for an application?

I know there are free converters out there. I am asking specifically if there is a way to convert using existing tools like Visual Studio, MSPaint, and so on.

Answer 1

Creating an icon in MSPaint works just fine. Here's how you should proceed to get it to work.

In Visual Studio

• Open Resources.resx from Solution Explorer (it's in the Properties folder)

• Choose Icons from DropDown Menu on the left [Ctrl+3]

• Choose Add New Icon from the DropDown Menu Add Resource

• Enter a name for the Icon Resource file

• Right click on all the icons in the left panel - one at a time - and choose Delete Image Type (The last icon cannot be deleted - Leave it for now)

In MSPaint or an image program of your choise (I prefer Microsoft Paint 3D)

• Create/Open the image that you would like to use (It could be a screenshot of your program)

• Resize the image to 256x256 pixels

• Select the full image [Ctrl+A] and then copy the image [Ctrl+C]

In Visual Studio

• Right click in the left panel (the icon panel) and choose New Image Type... [Ins]

• Choose Target Image Type 256x256, 24 bit

• (Select the New Target Type and) Paste [Ctrl+V] the image you copied from your image program

In your image program and in Visual Studio

• Repeat the above Image Copy (image program) and Target Paste (Visual Studio) process for the 24 bit icon size's 128x128, 64x64, 32x32 and 16x16 (and/or the ones you like to support)

• Don't forget to delete the last icon you couldn't delete before

In Visual Studio

• Save the icon file (.ico) (by closing its tab or using [Ctrl+S])

• Add the icon to your forms

• Right click your project file in the Solution Explorer and choose Properties
  (You'll also find it in the Visual Studio Menu Debug -> "Your Project Name" Properties...)

• Choose the Application section

• Under Resources - Icon and manifest browse to and select the icon file you just created.

All set...

(Tested with Visual Studio 2017 & Visual Studio Enterprise 2019)