Step 1.

Load PSP or whatever your image processing package is (this tutorial is based on how I do it in PSP 4.14, so you may have to adapt it a bit if you don't use PSP, or usea later version). You will then want to load a source image that is 24bit depth or higher (if its not at this depth, change it using the "Colours" menu > "Increase colour depth" > 24bit. It also hlp if you image is at a resultion which is a multiple of either 64x48 or 60x48 (then end result is 60x48, but TS icons are 64x48 and most things here can be used to make non-ts style icons for TS). The image I provide is 320x240 and at 24bit already, it is "anticon base image.png" (I use png for the compression it offers on 24bit images).



Step 2.

Resample your image down to either 60x48 if you can using the maintain aspect ratio, or with my example down to 64x48. Resample provides better quality resize with less blockiness but only works on 24bit images in my version of PSP. Its found in the "Image" menu. The result should look like "anticon example 1.png"



Step 3.

If you have an image of 60x48 already, skip this step. Otherwise you need to choose 4 coloumns of pixels to remove to give you a 60x48 image. I suggest taking them from the sides of the image since the unit image should be in the middle of the image with background showing toward the sides. For my ant example made in the above step, I chose to remove the first 4 coloumns from the left so I didn't remove any ant hill. I use the box selection tool and starting from the top right pixel selected down the whole image (48 rows down) but only 60 rows across to the left leaving 4 coloumns unselected. Now go to the "image" menu again and select "crop". This will remove the unselected pixels and you now have a 60x48 image like "anticon example 2.png"



Step 4.

Now you need to add a darkened strip where your unit name text will go. Use the box selection tool again and starting at one of the bottom corners select up 7 rows for one line of text (or 13 rows for 2 lines) and select all the way across to the opposite side of the icon image. This selection means that only the selected area of image will be edited so long as that selection remains in PSP. Now select the retouch tool from the tool bar and set the option to "Darken", the size to "20", the shape to "Circle", the Opacity to "90" and the texture to "none". Then you want to use the tool in the selected area by swiping across from one side to the other in a smooth motion. If the bar doesn't look dark enough for your liking repeat the swipe. Now cancel the selection box and your image should look like "anticon example 3.png"



Step 5.

Now you want to put your text onto the darkened bar. All you need to remember is to keep the size to 5 pixels high (look at other RA2 icons to see how you should make each letter look). A bit of experimentation will get your positioning right (keep a back up of the icon with just hte blakc bar incase you mess up and save a crappy looking text position). Also you want to put black pixels to the right of every far right pixel on your white characters (again look at other RA icons to see what I mean). Now go to the "Colours" menu and select "load pallet". I the open file window find the racameo.pal file and load it using the nearest colur matching option. This will decrease the bit depth down to 8bit and apply the cameo pallet. Your image should look almost like "anticon example 4.png" except for a few touch ups to be consistent with other RA2 icons.



Step 6.

To be consistent with other RA 2 icons, you need to put pallet index 0 (a blue colour in the ra2 cameo pallet) in each of the corners as in my example 4 file. You also want to add some shading to your BOTTOM line of text (your only line of text if your following the examples). Do this by copying the colours from either my final example file, or from other RA2 icons extracted to .pcx, using the colour picker tool and then painting carefully (keep a backup) over the white in the applicable row. You image should look exactly like my example 4 file now.



Step 7.

Save the image as a .pcx file and makesure its named XXXXicon 0000.pcx where XXXX is the unit identifier or a shortened version of it if the name is longer than 4 characters. Now you can use XCC to convert the pcx file to a TS shp file (TS and RA2 .shp file formats are the same) and its ready to be added to the game.