Build a real Windows icon from a JPG photo, with every size the system asks for.
When the only picture of a logo you have is a JPG, an .ico is still what Windows and the older browsers ask for.
A .ico is a container: this tool fills it with 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 pixel renderings of your picture, so the same file works for a desktop shortcut, a taskbar button and a browser tab without anything being rescaled at the last second.
Renaming a .jpg to .ico does not produce an icon — the file is still a JPEG inside and Windows shows a blank page. Converting builds the real container with real icon entries, which is the only way the picture will appear.
Portable apps, launchers, desktop shortcuts, file associations and old intranet pages expect an .ico. If the artwork only exists as a photo, converting is quicker than redrawing it, and the result is good enough for a shortcut nobody inspects at 400%.
A JPG cannot be transparent, and that is the part worth understanding before you convert.
A JPG has no alpha channel, so the icon keeps the background the photo already had: the wall behind the product, the paper under the drawing, the flat colour the graphic was flattened onto. Only the empty space added to make the image square is transparent, so a square JPG produces a fully opaque icon.
If the mark exists as a PNG with a transparent background, or better as an SVG, use that instead: the icon then sits on transparency and reads properly on a dark taskbar as well as a light one. The JPG to PNG converter can produce a lossless PNG of the same picture, but it cannot cut the background out — that needs an editor.
A JPG saved at a low quality already has faint blocks and ringing around edges. Shrinking it to 16 px averages those away, so small sizes are usually fine, but a 256 px entry can show the same softness the photo had. A higher-quality source gives a visibly crisper large icon.
Icons are square, so a wide photo is centred on a square canvas with transparent bands on two sides rather than distorted. Crop the photo to a square first if you want the subject to fill the icon — the visible mark is much bigger that way. The Quality field is ignored, because icon entries are stored losslessly.
Three steps, and the result is a file you can use straight away.
Drag it onto the box, click to choose, or paste it with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac). Up to 25 MB. A picture that is already square and at least 256 px on each side gives the best result; a wide or tall photo works but ends up smaller inside the icon.
The ico is built from the upload as it is, with transparency kept wherever an editor cut it out. Set a width only to shrink a very large photo before the icon is generated; the sizes inside the file are produced from it either way.
The result shows the largest entry and the total weight. Save the file and rename it to favicon.ico for a website, or point the shortcut or program at it. If you also need PNG and Apple icons, the favicon generator builds the whole set from one upload.
An icon is read at 16 px first, so crop for that size.
Cropping the JPG to the part that matters means the whole icon square is used by the subject instead of a slice of it. A tightly cropped photo stays recognisable at 32 px; a full frame with a lot of background turns into a grey rectangle.
Photos make acceptable shortcuts and passable tab icons, but a logo with a real cut-out background is what you want on a website. Keep a PNG or SVG master next to the .ico, and rebuild the icon from it once it exists, using the PNG to ICO converter.
Look at the 16 px entry before you ship the icon: faces, lettering and thin lines vanish there. If the picture becomes unreadable, crop tighter, or use a simplified version of it for the icon and keep the full photo for everything else.
Yes. There is no account, no trial, no payment and no watermark on the .ico, and the number of conversions is not limited. A short rate limit keeps the server available for other visitors.
Yes, if the JPG has one. JPEG cannot store transparency, so the icon inherits whatever surrounds the subject — a wall, paper, a flat colour. The only transparent part is the empty space added when a non-square picture is centred on the square icon canvas. For a cut-out icon, start from a PNG or an SVG instead.
16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 pixels, limited to the longest side of the upload: a 64 px JPG produces 16, 24, 32, 48 and 64, because the larger entries would only be upscaled guesses. 16, 32 and 48 are always present, since every icon needs them.
Up to 25 MB per file, with a 50 megapixel limit on the image. The biggest entry in the icon is 256 px, so a source between 256 and 1024 px is plenty; a 24 megapixel photo is accepted but adds upload time without adding icon detail.
Files are processed on our server and not stored. The JPG is decoded as it arrives and only the finished .ico is sent back to your browser.
