Favicons
A selection of the website bookmark icons that I have drawn over the years (in both 32-bit and 8-bit forms):
Firesnake.net (obsolete)
A miniature portrait of Pixelcritter
TheTed (obsolete)
Based on the former site logo; it had not been used since the site redesign.
Supergoo (obsolete)
Designed as a scaled-down form of her avatar. The red avatar was her own design and creation, but this is modelled on the anti-aliased rework I did in Photoshop using paths. No longer used after the move to radiantradon.com.
Photo-Pro (obsolete)
A favicon for Photo-Pro, my former employer. Based on the graphics of the company site.
Caladan
Jennifer Elaan’s website. The design is based on the site banner.
Fragmentary Glimpses of Eternity
I am hosting Ian Bell’s Fragmentary Glimpses of Eternity albums, so I made that page a favicon based on his DJ Dirac Delta logo.
LOLspiders (never used)
Intended for FireSnake’s former LOLspiders site.
The World According to Kang (declined)
Requested by Firesnake on behalf of her friend Kang; the design is based on previous requested work. Site no longer exists.
FreeRice
Based on the site graphics.
Mindcontemplation (2)
I disliked the old design, so I drew a fresh one based on the awesome piece of artwork featured on the page.
John Blumer’s home server
Based on a photograph of John’s; created at his request
Bit depths and saving favicons
For square icons, the most efficient way to save them would be a single 8-bit mode with a custom palette. Right? Turns out that, counter-intuitively, this is untrue. The most efficient method is in fact a 24-bit image, as you will see below. Ignore all the nonsense I wrote here previously, though.
16×16 icons have 256 pixels. All icons have a 1-bit mask. Each image and mask row is rounded up to a 32-bit boundary, so here each 16-pixel mask row has two padding bytes. Pixels in 24-bit icons are stored as 24-bit values, but 8-bit palette entries are four bytes each, with a padding byte. 32-bit icons still have a 1-bit mask in addition to the alpha channel. The comparison is as follows (all sizes in bytes):
| Component | 4-bit | 8-bit | 24-bit | 32-bit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image | 256 ÷ 2 = | 128 | 256 × 1 = | 256 | 256 × 3 = | 768 | 256 × 4 = | 1024 |
| Mask | 16 × 4 = | 64 | 16 × 4 = | 64 | 16 × 4 = | 64 | 16 × 4 = | 64 |
| Palette | 16 × 4 = | 64 | 256 × 4 = | 1024 | N/A | 0 | N/A | 0 |
| Headers | 6 + 16 + 40 = | 62 | 6 + 16 + 40 = | 62 | 6 + 16 + 40 = | 62 | 6 + 16 + 40 = | 62 |
| Total | 318 | 1406 | 894 | 1150 | ||||
Reference: ICO format at daubnet.com
Even a full 32-bit icon with alpha is still smaller than an 8-bit image. With larger image sizes, this will obviously no longer be true, but at 16×16, 24-bit is more efficient than 8-bit, as is 32-bit. Therefore, for square favicon images, stick to pure 24-bit colour and save on file size! (Or, if you heed W W Heinz’s words, 4-bit, only 318 bytes as now also documented …)