The release of an update to its icon editing tool, IconLover 4.23, has been announced by Aha-Soft. By adding the ability to automatically create 'hot' versions of toolbar icons, IconLover 4.23 makes designing icons for Vista-style toolbars even easier. Enhancing the appearance of round objects such as buttons, the Circle Mask is also new to version 4.23.Without having to learn complex image editing tools, IconLover allows designers and developers to draw or edit icons easily. IconLover, Supporting images of any size and color resolution, is perfectly tailored for making Vista-style icons. IconLover remains compatible with older versions of Windows and low-profile displays, producing 16 and 256-color icons. The support of 24-bit Full Color and 32-bit True Color images with alpha-channel makes icons produced by IconLover fit within Windows Vista and Windows XP guidelines.
The newest edition of IconLover makes it possible to automatically create 'hot' versions of icons. By displaying a different version of an icon when the user moves the mouse cursor over it, numerous applications in Vista and XP react to user interaction. Allowing the user to easily see which item is currently active, when the mouse cursor moves over a toolbar icon, it becomes 'hot'.
It is crucially important, when designing an application, to make the hot-tracking effect different from other effects. There are already several states available to each icons, such as normal and disabled. By simply graying out and engraving the image being disabled, disabled icons are easy to produce automatically from the 'normal' version, while 'hot' icons are not as easy to convey the effect. Using a wrong type of an effect would make it more difficult for the user to navigate your product.
Making it possible to hand-paint a single version of an icon, and obtain the disabled, and now the 'hot' states automatically, IconLover produces 'hot' versions of icons automatically.
By removing jaggedness from the edges, the new Circle Mask effect introduced in this version of IconLover improves the appearance of round objects such as navigation buttons. To make round objects smooth and natural, and is especially visible on smaller images, the new effect uses semi-transparent overlay.
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