Microangelo Toolset is a comprehensive set of four utilities that each provide a different aspect of icon manipulation.
Microangelo Animator is a bit of a misnomer, as this one can also be used to create icons whole cloth from scratch, or edit existing icons, and they may or may not be animated. The animation tools here are very clunky, as you can't drag and drop, or reorder, individual frames in an animation. You can only create new frames on the end or remove individual frames, severely limiting the usefulness among hardcore animators.
Microangelo Librarian does everything sister program Microangelo On Display does, that is, replacing icons inside a file. It also lets you create icon libraries, which can contain many icons from multiple locations. Finally, it lets you rip icons from whole folders or drives and put there somewhere new, ostensibly to create a library out of them. Those into manipulating large numbers of icons will need to get the hang of this one.
Microangelo Explorer is simply a graphical user interface for the other utilities. It lets you launch any of them from any point while exploring your system in a similar interface to Windows Explorer.
Finally, Microangelo Studio has the same look and feel of Microangelo Animator, but works with higher-res icons in their native image format rather than Microangelo Animator's .ani files. Also, it doesn't do animation. Other than that, it's really difficult to tell them apart.
These four tools make Microangelo Toolset roughly equivalent to IconCool Manager and IconCool Editor combined. These utilities don't approach the complexity of IconCool Studio, however, and its ability to plug itself in to Photoshop as well as its more advanced animation and editing ability. IconCool Studio Pro is also only slightly more expensive than Microangelo Toolset at $60 versus $50, and is therefore worth the extra expense over Microangelo's version.
Note: Microangelo Toolset is full-featured during its 21 day trial period. After 21 days, the full version is $50, or $80 for Microangelo Toolset, On Display, and Creation in a bundle. This software comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. This is the 32-bit version. If your 64-bit PC is running 64-bit Vista, please download the 64-bit version instead.
--Steve Horton
Reviewed by: BigHouse
Reviewed by: profdoc
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