Visual Studio: How to Get High-Quality Icons Using Image Library
http://c.statcounter.com/9008858/0/3a863831/1/Almost all UI applications need icons and bitmaps. However, it's not an easy task to create or find icons which match the Windows style, look like well known Microsoft icons and are royalty-free ... unless you use the Visual Studio Image Library which contains over 5,000 high quality icons and bitmaps from Visual Studio, Office, Windows and other Microsoft applications.
Visual Studio Image Library
The images are packaged in a zip file. The table summarizes the main facts.
| Formats | bmp, icon, png, xaml and ai (only in the Visual Studio 2013 Image Library) |
| Resolutions | 16x16, 24x24, 32x32 |
| Colors | 24 bit, 32 bit |
| Categories | Common Elements, Actions, Annotation, Objects
(and an archive folder with VS 2010 icons and bitmaps). |
| Icons come from... | Office, Visual Studio, Windows 8, 7, XP and other apps. |
The screenshot shows some icons from the category Common Elements / png in the style of Windows 8.
The library also contains icons in the old, more colorful Windows Vista style. You find them in an archive subfolder. A pdf document explains the icon-mapping between both styles.
Download
The Visual Studio Image Library is available since Visual Studio 2005. Old versions were bundled with Visual Studio. Since Visual Studio 2012 it's only available as a separated download. See the table for details.
Version
How to get it
Documentation
Size
Visual Studio 2005
...\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary\VS2005ImageLibrary.zip
Visual Studio 2008
...\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\VS2008ImageLibrary\1033\VS2008ImageLibrary.zip
Visual Studio 2010
…\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\VS2010ImageLibrary\1033\VS2010ImageLibrary.zip
Visual Studio 2012
Download from Microsoft Download Center
(published 13 March 2013)
19.4 MB
Visual Studio 2013
Download from Microsoft Download Center
(published 6 May 2014)
285.6 MB
Visual Studio 2015
Download from Microsoft Download Center
(published 28 January 2016)
2.9 GB
Visual Studio 2017
Download from Microsoft Download Center
(published 28 November 2017)
12.5 MB
Installation
- Get the zip file
- Unzip the image library zip in folder
Links
Tips and Tricks: Visual Studio 2010 Image Library
Blogpost of the Visual Studio Blog. Weston Hutchins, Program Manager of the Visual Studio Shell Team, highlights the 2010 version of the image library.
See Also
-
Information about other TechNet Wiki articles written by Carsten Siemens.
Other languages
This article is also available in other languages: