Iconographer recognizes the fact that it might not be the only tool you use to create icons. With the advent of 32-bit icons, it becomes more and more appealing to use professional applications such as Adobe Photoshop to create icons, and leave only the final tweaking to tools such as Iconographer.

Once you have the icon in the state you like, there are two ways of getting it into Iconographer. One is the traditional copy and paste method, the other is through drag-and-drop. You can drag images into the editing area (the dragged item will be placed into a floating selection, as well into the various icon and masks slots on the right side.

If the program supports enhanced transparency data (such as in Adobe Photoshop's layers), Iconographer can import that data as masks. This can be done through the Paste as Icon and Mask command, or by dragging and dropping the image into the preview area. The image will be split up into an icon and a mask, and the results will be merged with the current icon contents (if any).