Free Icon Versions for After Effects and Premiere Pro
(now for Windows)

Preface: This post is about a cool solution to a highly mundane problem.  Also, shout out to Scott Simmons for asking me to put these online.  I hadn’t thought to initially.

If you’ve been an Adobe video user (or is it just called subscriber now?)  for awhile, you’ve probably moved through multiple software versions.  And if you’re a professional creator who has to revisit different projects for past clients, or are used to troubleshooting idiosyncrasies, or just like hoarding, you may have several versions of Adobe’s software installed.  (I do.) Well when all those versions are opened up, it can get confusing while switching between them.  That is, until now.

David Torno over at ProVideoCoalition decided to be proactive and organize the icon clutter for Adobe After Effects, creating a neat visual versioning system.  Shortly after, Sam Parnell pitched in and created a few icon versions for Premiere Pro’s latest Creative Cloud versions.  It all looked slick, with the one small issue that the icons were all Mac OS-based.  Since I’m on Windows and I wanted to get in on the action, I decided to convert the files to the .ico Windows standard and am now sharing them for free with anyone else that will find them useful.

Download links for the Mac or Windows versions after the jump!

First, the download links:

For the Mac OS-based icon versions and icon replacement instructions, go here.
For my Windows versions, click here

INSTRUCTIONS:

The process of switching out program icons in Windows is unfortunately more difficult than on Mac OS X.  The first thing you want to do is download a small freeware utility named ResourceHacker.

That program will do what you’re looking for.  For the step-by-step of using it to replace an icon, go here.

However, after replacing the icon, my existing shortcuts weren’t updating on the desktop, and creating new shortcuts maintained the old icon too.  Restarting the computer MAY have fixed this (I don’t know), but instead I did the following to force the icon refresh:

1. Right-click the shortcut and click Properties.
2. Click “Change Icon…”
3. Select a random icon from the displayed list that is not the updated icon you want.
4. Click “OK.”  Click “Apply.” Click “OK” to close the window.   You should be back to the desktop again.
5. Right-click the shortcut and again open Properties.
6. Change the icon, but this time back to the correct icon.
7. Click “OK.”  Click “Apply.” Click “OK” to close the window.   You should be looking at the correct icon on the desktop, and everywhere else.
Repeat this procedure for the other desktop shortcuts as well.

Congrats! Your software now has icons that reflect the actual version that is being run.

The one caveat here is that this simply isn’t as useful for Windows as it is for Mac, mainly because on a Mac, Cmd-Tab cycles through program icons, whereas on Windows, Alt-Tab cycles through program windows.  So the task-bar, where icons are shown, is where this is mainly of use on Windows.

Still, isn’t it nice to feel more organized when launching and managing different Adobe programs?