Metro Style Icon Studio Boosts Windows Modern-style Ui

By Author: Valeria Odintsova
Total Articles: 1
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Icon designers and the makers of icons for applications targeting the new Metro-style UI introduced with mobile and PC versions of Windows 8 have been lacking an appropriate design tool for too long. Luckily, the latest release of Metro Style Icon Studio is out to help.



The newly released version of Metro Style Icon Studio now offers the same Metro-style user interface it's targeting, helping designers get a better feel of the look they're aiming at. Metro Style Icon Studio features a new Metro-style PNG template, and allows making graphics for Metro-style apps for Windows 8. While Metro Style Icon Studio can be used to design icons in any style, its major goal is helping designers to produce monochrome Metro-style icons in layered PNG format with semi-transparent alpha channel making the icons blend seamlessly with the rest of the UI. With all the usual drawing tools and special effects readily available, Metro Style Icon Studio can be used to quickly make Metro-style monochrome icons from get go or to automatically convert a bunch of ...
... Vista or Windows7 icons into the new format.



What's New in Metro-style Icons



Microsoft Windows 8 is a freshly released operating system that features an all-new and rather controversial new style user interface. The redeveloped UI is called 'Metro'. The concept of the updated user interface is focused around the actual content rather than pictures, relying more on shapes and texts rather than colorful graphics. While the concept is not completely new (products such as Microsoft Encarta 95 and MSN 2.0 were using similar style), Windows 8 is actually the first desktop operating system to throw the new Metro-style interface at all users.



For icon designers, there's little new in the Metro style compared to earlier Vista and Windows 7 icons. Similar to Windows Vista and Windows 7, the maximum size of these icons is 256x256 pixels. The high-res icons are stored in the familiar layered PNG format with semi-transparent alpha-channel for easy blending with background. In Windows 8, the Explorer makes use of these high-resolution icons by default even on low-res displays. While this may seem like an overkill, the system will readily downscale the icons to make them look crisp and detailed regardless of the size and resolution of the screen. This, in particular, allows Metro-style icons to be used and to appear great on all types of displays from regular VGA-sized phone displays to quad-resolution large-diagonal screens used in professional applications.



Are Metro Icons Black and White?



Not black-and-white. While the designer will draw Metro-style icons in various shades of grey, the system can render them in all possible color combinations. For example, the Internet Explorer logo is usually white on a blue background, while other apps can be presented on red, orange, purple, green and other colored tiles.



Free Download



Metro Style Icon Studio is free to try. The app can be launched in Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, and can be downloaded instantly from Icon Empire .