Now you need to find the actual symbol you need to use. The Civilization forums don't let you resize images, unlike most forums! Yay! Open it with Inkscape and you should see an orb with a cross in it, like this. Save it wherever you like, preferably somewhere you can find it later. This step is pretty important, so if you haven't scroll back up and download the file. Simply run through the installer and open Inkscape. You're going to have to install it from their website for your appropriate system - I use Windows, but it works for Mac or Linux (although if you're the kind of person that uses Linux you probably already know about Inkscape).

We're going to be using a free and open-source editor called Inkscape today. Step 0: Install Inkscape (because life is zero-indexed) Here's an example from Wikipedia (which generally uses SVG for its images): No need to fiddle with the eraser tool in a raster editor. Plus, they're very easy to edit! If there's a rectangle in the background of an image, you can just move it around.

Vector graphics, on the other hand, are defined by shapes and paths, meaning you can zoom in and out and they'll never become blocky. While raster images are great for storing photographs and other intricate pictures, they have the large problem of being unscalable without pixelization, and being hard to edit easily after they're created. These images are defined as an array of pixels, each of which is assigned a color. Most editors and images you're familiar with use what's called raster or bitmap images. For those who aren't familiar, here's a hopefully quick tutorial.īut first, a word about vector graphics. But, as it happens, I have created a handy-dandy SVG template! If you're familiar with the SVG format and have a vector editor handy such as Inkscape (what I'll be using - it's free) or Illustrator (which may or may not work for this template, which is designed for Inkscape), then you can probably skip most of the below tutorial. But if you're also like me in that you have little experience with GIMP or any raster editor, then perhaps your icons with this fantastic tutorial turned out less than fantastic. If you're like me, then you find quite a lot of importance in making a really good looking icon. How to make a cool civilization icon or flag or whatever!

Inkscape trace bitmap icon