Where can one find free software icons / images?This may not be directly related to programming, but I always find it hard to get quality icons that can be used for software.
I currently have the need for some type of "green checkmark image", and I always seem to be looking for print, save, delete types of icons...
Anybody have good resources?
You can use Icon Finder [1] to search or browse through more than 100,000 icons.
I really like the Silk Icon [2] set. It's available under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Here are a few examples.
Also see Silk Companion 1 [3], "fuelled by a need for a additional icons and variations in the same format."
Both of these sets are under Creative Commons [4] license, so attribution is required.
[1] http://www.iconfinder.net/I really like Crystal Icons [1]. They are LGPL so you can include them in commercial projects too, as long as they are dynamically linked.
History
2001, Microsoft and Apple released the new versions of its operational systems. Linux, which was already a success in servers, was beginning to dawn as a desktop. I had tested some of the Linux distributions and was really impressed by them. The GUI’s Window Maker, which was similar to the Nextsteep and Gnome interfaces seemed fantastic.
But despite liking other interfaces, KDE was the one that really captivated me. Not as much by the visual, but for the functionality and the fact that it’s easy to use. The interface looked a lot like the MS Windows 98, which in my opinion was easier to use at the time as it was estheticacly problematic. It was in that context that I started to create the Crystal icon theme, which initially had the simple intention to give my Linux Desktop a compatible look with the graphics of the new Windows XP and MacOSX operation systems.
In the same year I was invited to join the marketing department of Conectiva SA, known today as Mandriva. Helio Castro, developer of the KDE and workmate, was the first one to show interest on the graphics and initially released some of my pieces on kdelook.org. There and inside Conectiva as well, the icons had a great acceptance.
Later on the theme would be added to the official KDE.
Today Crystal Project icons are used in thousands of softwares, websites and other media throughout the world.
The set has many sizes (from 16x16 to 128x128) and I think you can also find the SVG versions.
[1] http://www.everaldo.com/crystal/These are two links you may find useful:
Both of them are icon collections licensed under some sort of Creative Commons License and are suitable for commercial applications.
[1] http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
Crystal Clear icon set [1]. LGPL [2].
If you want more, see Freebies Round-Up: Icons, Buttons and Templates [3].
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Crystal%5FClearI don't know if someone already mentioned it but there are the tango icons [1]
They are released under a Creative Commons license [2]
[1] http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_LibraryIf you have Visual Studio 2005 installed, it installs a library of standard windows bitmaps, cursors and icons. You can find the zip file here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary\VS2005ImageLibrary.zip
I <3 the Fugue Icons 3.0 [1] set. It includes 3000 nice looking icons (with PSD source). Licensed under CC BY 3.0 [2].
Click on the above image for a full preview ;)
[1] http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/The Silk icon set from
famfamfam.com
[1] is used by
Mindtouch's
[2] Dekiwiki.
Another one is Tango from
FreeDesktop
[3] and is used by Ubunutu for instance.
Both are licensed under CreativeCommons
Ton
[1] http://famfamfam.com
[1] http://openclipart.org/media/view/media/homeThe Open Clipart Gallery [1]
Drawing Together
This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons. If you'd like to help out, please join the mailing list, and review the archives.
http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project
CC Attribution Share Alike license (some parts are public domain)
I bookmarked these sites long ago, I hope they are still relevent
http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/
http://www.intersmash.com/300images/
http://www.codeandcoffee.com/2007/06/26/free-stock-icons-for-your-next-application/
http://www.technacular.com/2007/02/12/collection-of-sites-providing-free-web-icons-and-buttons/
Hope it helps
Eclipse
[1] has a nice set of icons and the
Eclipse Public License
[2] is business friendly. There used to be a private distribution of just the icons, but that link is gone. You could still download the source and look for icons folders. See
org.eclipse.ui/icons/full/etool16/
[3] and
org.eclipse.jdt.ui/icons/full/obj16/
[4] for example.
There's iconfinder [1].
Each icon in there has it's own license, so I can't really state just one. But most of them are under LGPL [2] or a some variant of the CC [3] license. Before downloading any of the icons, you have to check it's license yourself.
[1] http://www.iconfinder.net/glyFX [1] is a great source for Windows XP and Vista style icons. Check out the free sets [2] that are available especially the XP and Vista common sets [3]
[1] http://www.glyfx.com/You might want to check this post [1]. I listed some of the best icon search engines and icon catalogs.
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/903217/icons-graphics-for-your-applications/2956173#2956173Definitely try out IconBuffet [1]. They have loads of free delivery sets. The Manhattan series is my favorite as far as icons for software use. Also, if you register Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition, you get hundreds of free IconBuffet stock icons for free. I'm not sure if this is still available, or whether they continued the offer with VS2008, but it was an awesome deal.
Here are is one example [2]:
Additionally, all the IconBuffet icons are liberally licensed [3]:
You may use the Product in your personal, commercial, and client projects, including advertising, web designs, software applications, on-line or multimedia projects, presentations, film, video, and computer games.
A personal note here: I would appreciate it if you signed up using my referral link [4].
[1] http://www.iconbuffet.com/freedelivery/packagesThis blog has an extensive list of free icons, with descriptions of their license agreements:
http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/
this is available if you use Visual Studio - i think the express version may come with too
Smashing magazine periodically releases high qualify free icons. Go to http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/freebies/ You'll have to read the description of each set, but most of them are free for both personal and commercial use
Sproutcore comes with some high quality icons, and the framework is under the very permissive MIT license. Even if you don't use the library, you should still be able to borrow its icons. See the icons tab under http://www.sproutcore.com/static/sample_controls/
iconPot [1] has a pretty small collection of really good quality free icons.
[1] http://iconpot.com/iconfinder [1] has a great search for GPL, GNU, and Creative Commons icons.
[1] http://www.iconfinder.net/For stockphotos:
sxc.hu
[1]
Tons of pictures and 90% of them are free for commercial use.
Also, on
Flickr's Advanced Search
[2] you can search for images, that are under CreativeCommons and free for commercial use.
Nuvola is pretty good: http://www.icon-king.com/projects/nuvola/
Some samples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuvola
What I've found helpful is to combine professionally drawn icons using Axialis Icon Workshop: http://www.axialis.com/iconworkshop/
It's not free, but it's inexpensive and get lifetime upgrades (and there's a 30 day free trial.) And it comes with lots of icons in it's own library. And you can easily combine icons (e.g., combine a "not" sign and microphone for a mute symbol, etc.). I combined a talking bubble and a stopwatch for our program "speechpacer"
I have no relationship w/ the company other than being a very satisfied customer.
I found this on Digg [1]:
http://sixrevisions.com/resources/40-beautiful-free-icon-sets/
[1] http://digg.com/design/40_Beautiful_Free_Icon_SetsWikimedia Commons [1] contains a number of icon sets available under free licenses (allowed to create derivative works, and allowed to use for commercial use). The license may be public domain, GPL, LGPL, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, but the license for each is clearly stated on the image page.
Have a bit of a browse around... there is a lot of stuff there, but sometimes it 's not easy to find.
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:IconsdeviantArt.com has a category for icons:
http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/icons/os/?order=9
http://www.openclipart.org Huge collection of user generated icons and graphics. CC, LGPL, GPL, PD, whatever
www.vecteezy.com [1] Free vector art, more art than icons or buttons, CC, GPL, PD
[1] http://www.vecteezy.comYou can try Googling, or look at my favorite "resource-site" :)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
Scroll down, in right sidebar (it's alphabetically sorted) you'll find Icon Sets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That might be what you need.
Edit: of course, if you wouldn't find it in Icon Sets, there's plenty of another categories ...
Or ... look at http://www.famfamfam.com/ . Silk Icons are beautiful (and small) :)
50 of the Best Ever Web Development, Design and Application Icon Sets
Siena (free for both personal and commercial use if RSS subscriber)
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/200-free-exclusive-icons-siena/
Am I the only one who uses interfacelift [1]?
[1] http://interfacelift.com/icons/downloads/date/any/Here is another site with free icons: http://thenounproject.com/
http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/ is a GREAT resource for amazing icons!!
Its currently down right now, but when it comes back up, search for Icons in the search bar.
EDIT: Search for web 2.0 on the site.
VistaIcons.com [1] has a big collection of free 256x256 icons. I've used them for a small project of mine and they look really good.
[1] http://vistaicons.com/More free icons:
Browse through linux icon sets [1]. Some great stuff can be found there - and they are almost always available in GPL or LGPL license.
KDE Icons [2]
Gnome Icons [3]
[1] http://www.bin-co.com/blog/2007/12/a-secret-source-for-great-free-icons-for-your-desktop-and-web-apps/Here is a large set of creative commons licensed icons [1] of various tyes and styles that I stumbled onto recently.
[1] http://beta.legaltorrents.com/torrents/340-web-development-icons-supersetCheck out:
I have been watching the Picol [1] icon set to see what happens, and where it goes. It looks interesting and is available for free. They have an online Icon library [2] to peruse the icons they currently already have available!
[1] http://picol.org/I use www.iconfinder.net [1].
[1] http://www.iconfinder.net/Iconfinder provides high quality icons for webdesigners and developers in an easy and efficient way. The site launched in 2007 as the first search engine focused on icons.
The target audience is webdesigners and developers, but the icons are also used to style desktop or in presentations and reports...
Smashing Magazine [1] has regular free icon/vector/fonts postings - and a bunch of other cool stuff besides.
[1] http://www.smashingmagazine.com/gnome-look.org [1]
kde-look.org [2]
Basically these are themes for both desktops. There are TONS of themes and each theme has many icons of many applications. There are also cursor themes etc. Be sure to check out the gtk themes as well. they are mostly GPL'd.
[1] http://gnome-look.org/The best site I found that offers free icons is http://www.iconfinder.com/
http://www.thaigoodweb.com/png/ also has some png icons
Eggheadcafe have recently launched following set of Vista and Win7 free icon collections -
Vista Ecommerce Icons
Vista Application Icons
Vista Software Icons
Vista Database Icons
Windows 7 Theme Icons
Web Development Icons
Windows 7 Business Icons
Windows 7 Theme Icons
DataGrid Icons
Elite TreeView Icons
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/free-commercial-icons-graphics/
If you use jQuery UI library to reduce number of different resources (css, js) to provide tabs, datepicker colorpicker, slider, progressbar functionality, you may have found useful UI icons combined in CSS sprite for another UI elements across a website:
Here is a list of all my icon links, some for free and some for pay:
Needless to say ... I like looking at icons!
Another great site (Aug 30, 09) ...
[1] http://www.mezzoblue.com/icons/chalkwork/collection/I'd like to post this as a comment, though I'm not capable (yet) to do so, so I post this pseudo-answer.
Could you please reformulate your question, avoiding usage of the word "free"? What exactly do you want?
I also found these: http://prothemedesign.com/free-webdesign-tools/circular-icons/
Images under LGPL:
http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Category:LGPL_images [1]
DESCRIPTION: http://www.icon-king.com
NUVOLA is an SVG based icon theme. This mean that all icons where designed with a vector graphics application and SVG files are available. Icons of the KDE version of Nuvola are PNG images (unscalable). SVG files are available at www.icon-king.com from the day 15 may 2004.
LICENSE
Graphics from both links above are released under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) which means that you can use it even in Commercial Software.
[1] http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Category:LGPL%5Fimagesiconarchive.com [1]
iconshock.com [2] (you can download samples, read their license)
[1] http://iconarchive.comRecently Dugg: 50 of the best Web and App icon sets [1]
[1] http://speckyboy.com/2009/02/02/50-of-the-best-ever-web-development-design-and-application-icon-sets/Leverage other people's knowledge of sites using delicious [1].
[1] http://delicious.com/search?p=icons&u=icon&chk=&context=userposts&fr=del_icio_us&lc=0If you are in Microsoft domain your first source for imagery would be the Visual Studio 2008 Image Library.
As you can see in Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison Guide [1]
the library is available in Standard Edition and higher.
It is located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\VS2008ImageLibrary
The icons are typical for desktop applications but I've made experience they look sweet on web pages too.
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=727BCFB0-B575-47AB-9FD8-4EE067BB3A37,iconshock.com (free and commercial)
I have used http://www.webiconsets.com/ before and they have a small but good set of free icon packs that target websites. They have specialized packs for social media, payments, etc.
I have 64 free iPhone tab bar icons [1] available on App-Bits.com.
[1] http://www.app-bits.com/downloads/iphone-toolbar-icon-set.htmlI'm using http://dezignus.com/ there are many free great icons in good quality and web 2.0 style (free of course)
Iconza [1]
Customizable icons for your web site. Totally free. Change size, colours, background and download.
[1] http://www.iconza.com/Try IconArchiver [1] and We Love Icons [2]. These sites have really good icons.
[1] http://www.iconarchive.com/I use those: http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/
