Design application icon using Inkscape

Here's the tutorial on the easy way to make icon (Android App icon in this case).

We programmers suck at graphic design, which is why in Google Play you can find lots of icons drawn with MS Paint or something like that :)

While we will never be good at this thing, it doesn't mean we have to settle with sub-par icons. In this post I will show you how I made this icon in Inkscape using only a few basic drawing tools, all in about 15 minutes.  It's not that good compared to the professionally-made ones, but I think it looks better that a lots of icons on Google Play.

There are 7 steps to go from nothing to the image above. 

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Howto: Bitmap tracing with Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector-based graphic editor similar to Illustrator or Coral Draw. Among very useful features is bitmap tracing that will turn your bitmap graphic into a vector graphic. I used to use similar feature on Coral Draw 3 and I would say that this technology has come a long way. The image crated by Coral Draw 3 was barely usable. What I got from Inkscape on another hand is awesome.

Firstly you obviously have to open your bitmap file. It can be a JPG, PNG, etc.

The bitmap tracing is hidden in menu "Path".

Tracing dialog pops up. There are several tracing methods. You will need to click "update" to see the preview tho. Once satisfied, click "OK". Tracing will take some time. When it's done, you can close this dialog. Your traced image will already be placed in the worksheet.

When you close the dialog, the traced image will be exactly on top of your original bitmap image. Move it out.

Now you can work on it. You can un-group it, change color, rotate, scale, and whatnot. Have fun.