Good Free Icons for your effect plugin

Rick Brewster · September 27, 2009

Some effects are not easy to come up with an icon for. Sometimes there just isn't any graphical fit for what the plugin does -- or, like Gaussian Blur, it's difficult to come up with a good icon that fits in 16x16 pixels. But, it's still highly recommended that you include one. Combining icons can get you something pretty good -- look at the icon for Effects -> Blurs -> Surface Blur for an example. I combined (arrow-circle-225-left) and a rotated+cropped copy of (contrast-control-up), and got this ... . It's just abstract enough, but just enough of a fit, that it works.

Making icons is difficult, but thankfully the ones in Paint.NET are only 16x16. Here are some free sets that I've found useful with Paint.NET. Be very careful to adhere to the icon set's license. For the Creative Commons Attribution ones, you must give credit somehow. For the LGPL icons, it may affect how you license or package your plugin. Like with anything else on the forum, if your use of these icons does not adhere to the licensing requirements, your plugin will be removed.

Fugue and Diagona, by Yusuke Kamiyamane -- Free (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0), or royalty-free (aka, no attribution required) for $49.95 and $9.95 (respectively), http://www.pinvoke.com/

I just recently came across these from a stray comment on my blog. I've since adopted it wholesale for almost every icon in the Paint.NET v3.5 interface. They are very good, and I think Yusuke could make a lot of money by selling custom icons (although that would also make him very busy!).

Fugue comes with 16x16 and PSD (Photoshop) versions. Diagona comes in 16x16 and 10x10 formats.

Silk, by Mark James (famfamfam). Free (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 or 3.0), http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

These are very popular all over the Internet, and there's a good reason for that. They are only 16x16 pixels.

Tango, by the Tango Desktop Project -- Public Domain. http://tango.freedesktop.org/

These are pretty good. I think GIMP uses these, or at least their style and color palette. Comes in 16x16, 22x22, 32x32, and SVG (vector) formats.

Crystal, by Everaldo Coelho -- LGPL. http://www.everaldo.com/crystal/

These are also very good, and be sure to note the LGPL licensing requirements. I found that the sharpness of the icons was not consistent. It comes in 16x16 through 128x128 sizes. Be sure to get both the regular and OpenOffice.org icon sets.

Oxygen, by various contributors, LGPL, http://www.oxygen-icons.org/

These are also very good, and be sure to note the LGPL licensing requirements. I found that the sharpness of the icons was not consistent. It does come in all shapes and sizes though: 16x16 up through 128x128, and also SVG (vector).

Edited June 17, 2020 by toe_head2001
Fixed broken links

Simon Brown · September 27, 2009

Thanks for the links, but for LGPL icons, how do you recommend non-FOSS plugins include the icons? Surely shipping loose PNGs with effects to go in the effects folder would quickly shift its purpose.