Those of you who’ve followed me for a while know I’m a big software fan-girl of Scrivener and Scrapple (both programs produced by Literature & Latte.) One of the great things about Scrivener is its file based approach. Instead of one huge document, it uses a series of document folders and files that can be linked in various ways. And for those visual types mourning colored Post-its in this electronic age, you can even assign icons and colors. Sadly, the stock icons in Scrivener in my opinion… Well, they kind of suck… (sorry.)
Fortunately the great people at Literature & Latte anticipated our rabid need for customization and made it possible to easily add custom icons.
Now you can download ready made icons off the web (ico files) from a number of online archives or you can choose to make your own. After sorting through hundreds of icons (a major time suck,) I found all kinds of intricate and wonderful images. But although I have the maturity of a sixteen-year-old, I have *insert mumbling here* eyes. Those intricate faces that looked so good large, shrunk down, just made my project binder look cluttered.
All I wanted was a bunch of colored balls that I could assign to my characters. So deciding I’d wasted enough time (ironically by trying to save time,) I decided to make my own boringly simple icons using Gimp, an open source(free) Photoshop type program. It was so surprisingly easy that I decided to share.

Download and install a copy of Gimp if you don’t have it.

Launch Gimp.. c’mon peeps keep up.

Go to… File> New>  click on the advance + sign in the new image box. Select transparency for background and 256 x 256 for size and click okay.

Go to >filters >render >sphere generator. A window will pop up with a generic sphere.

Notice the  layer section in the top right. Each layer can be adjusted independently for  color (properties  section) and position lower right.

You can use the preview to see how your adjustments affect the output. Click Okay when it’s just right. You can save here or add some bling. I like using the supernova filter.

Adjust the properties to get it just right.

Bamb!

Save your new Icon! Give it a name  and select ico file type in the save window.

See, piece of cake. Now your ready to add it to your Scrivener binder. Right click on the file you want to assign it to, Add your shiny new icon to the library.

Browse to  new icon file and click okay and it will show up in your library the next time you access the ‘Change Icon’ menu command.