Create Vista style folder icons
How can I create icons in a Vista style folder with something inside the folder?
imageres.dll
(IIRC) contains icons for the front and back of the folder, and I can put my own image in between.
However, in explorer-generated thumbnail icons and most pre-generated icons, the image inside the folder is rotated three-dimensionally so that it appears to stick out of the folder.
I am assuming it is a skew transformation; does anyone know exactly how much i should distort the image?
Note that I am not asking how to do this in Photoshop or programmatically; I ask what are the parameters.
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Your first stop on UI design like this at this time should probably be the Windows User Interaction Guidelines (also available in PDF ). There are of course articles on Aesthetics in these guides , in particular you will find a detailed chapter on Icons there .
For various aspects of icon design, these guidelines do provide accurate parameters, while for others they at least offer ranges of values or characteristics, see, for example, the sections on Perspective , Light Source and Shadows .
However, I don’t think you’ll find special parameters there in relation to your assumption that one skew might do the trick; it actually requires a slightly more complex transformation to achieve the desired perspective effect, as shown in the second example in the Perspective section : Three-dimensional objects are represented in perspective as solid objects seen from a vantage point with a small bird view with two vanishing points. (An approximation via skew / shear transform may still be possible as per my comment below.)
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