Change order of images in icon file

Question

Is there an app that can change the order of images inside an icon?

Thanks!

Answer 1

What you'll need to do that is a resource editor. A google search will reveal many free ones out there. The restorator is a great one, but not free and over-priced IMO.

Any decent resource editor will allow you to see icons in the exe or dll and save them or replace them. I don't know of any that will allow you to reorder them, but just about any out there would allow you to save the icons out and then replace them back in the exe/dll in whatever order you'd like.

Answer 2

The only resource editor I know of that will allow you to re-order the embedded icons including png compressed vista icons is Resource Tuner Console.

Answer 3

You can change the image order using Pixelformer (an icon/bitmap editor). Import the icon, reorder the images as you wish, then export it back.

Answer 4

Using a resource editor is not an easy way to do this because you have to edit both ICON and ICON GROUP and I tried to do this with Resource Hacker and could not do it.

I found Easy Icon Maker is able to rearrange the order of the icons properly... it's the only icon editor that I found with this option, and I tried about half a dozen. The editor itself is not nearly as good as IcoFX (http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/icofx_portable)

Why would you want to do this? Well there are certain times when Windows will use the first icon file that matches the size, but this may not be the color-depth that you want... for instance if you are on an older machine like Windows 2000 that doesn't support Alpha Channels then putting these at the beginning of your ICO file will cause Windows 2000 to try to render it so it results in black dots all over the image.