The icon editor allows you not only to import and export icons but also to make various custom edits to the icons. The following four free icon editors have a lot of editing tools to meet your needs. These editing tools include painting tools, color tools, layer tools, transformation tools, etc.
Read the following to see what features these free icon editors have.
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Varilcons Icon Editor
Varilcons Icon Editor is an open-source icon editor that provides you with professional icon editing tools.
You can make new icons in three standard sizes of 16*16, 32*32, 48*48 and create standard-compliant ICO files. It supplies 22 vector tools to help you draw and build icons, including drawing tools such as pencils, brushes, remember points, shapes, palettes, text, and adjustment tools, such as color, brightness, contrast, and gradient fill.
Moreover, it also has a multi-tab interface that allows you to open and deal with multiple icons at once. You can also import or export frames in common formats.
GIMP
GIMP is the best free icon maker software for Windows, macOS and Linux. You can use it to edit icons in various formats, including ICO, JPG, PNG, BMP, etc.
Its functions are rich enough to exceed your imagination. You can customize your icons with the airbrush, brush, pencil, eraser, etc. in the basic drawing tools. Conversion tools allow you to easily move, scale, stretch and rotate individual parts or the entire icons.
If you want your icons to look better in detail, you can use the color tools to adjust the color, brightness, highlight, tone, etc. of each part of the icons. The layer tools also allow you to create complex multi-layer icons, and filters can adjust the blur and distortion of the icons.
Inkscape
Inkscape is a free icon editor with flexible drawing tools, powerful text tools and compatible with a wide range of file formats.
Pencil tool, pen tool, calligraphy tool, shape tool, text tool, embedded bitmap, and clone tool can help you quickly complete the creation and editing of icons. You can also perform conversion, Z-order, grouping, layer editing and other operations on your icons.
Its color tools are quite professional, including color selectors, gradient editor, color filling, dashed stroke, path marking and so on. Its writing tools are also quite powerful. You can use multi-line text, ant installed outline fonts and scripts, and adjust kerning, letter spacing and line spacing.
Krita
Krita is a professional icon editor with comprehensive and various editing tools. Whether you are a novice or a professional, you can easily use it because it gives you specific instructions for all operations.
Its operation interface is clean and intuitive, and you can move and customize the tools on the panel according to your specific workflow. Its brush engine, color smear engine, shape engine, particle engine, and filter engine allow you to customize your brush to meet your specific needs.
It also has many unique tools to make your icons look more refined, including drawing assistants, layer management, selection and conversion tools, full color management, OpenGL enhancement, PSD support, HDR painting, Python scripting, surrounds mode, and resource manager.
Conclusion
The free icon editors above can help you make colorful icons. If you like them, give them a try.