How to create high quality icons ?

Question

I used this way to create icon :

1. Download an image from internet

2. Change the size of the image with Fotoshop and save it as icon with .ico format

But it has a problem that it has not high quality.
I don't have any idea

I tried increase it's resolution but it didn't worked.

Answer 1

If this is for a favicon in a website, it can be tricky to get a clearer image in such a small space. You can give a higher resolution image like 64 by 64 pixels but it'll still scale down to around 16 by 16. I always end up making a different logo design for the favicon because only the simplest shapes are recognizable at such an extremely small resolution.

If this is for a website and not the favicon, I recommend using SVG instead of ICO format. Font Awesome and many other font-based icon libraries are great. Going vector-based keeps the icons as sharp and ant-aliased as absolutely possible even on very pixel-dense smart phone screens.