IcoFX - Free (and Portable) Icon Editor

IcoFX

"IcoFX is an award winning freeware icon editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. It is designed to work with Windows XP and Windows Vista icons supporting transparency.

With a wealth of tools and more than 40 effects at your fingertips, there’s virtually no limit to the icons you can create. You can convert your favorite images into icons, or icons into images. With IcoFX you can extract icons from other files, including Windows Vista files. You can easily work with multiple files using the batch processing capability of IcoFX.

Support for Vista icon with PNG compression

Create icons for Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP / Vista

Support for transparency (alpha channel)

Batch processing for import, export and extract

Multiple language support

More than 40 effects + custom filter

Resolutions up to 256x256

Data types: 2, 16, 256, True Color, True Color + Alpha

Extract icons from 32 bit exe and dll

Import and export images

Transparent, Brighten/Darken, Blur/Sharpen tools

..."

About twice a year I seem to need to edit an icon and each time I seem to forget which icon editing utility I last used and end up hunting the Net for another.

This one looks pretty cool and one I'll have to try the next time I play my icon game... ;)

(via the Portable Freeware collection - IcoFX Portable V1.5)