Creating Icon .bmp Files

[Curmudgeon]

I want to create some larger icons for my failing eyes.

What (freeware?) software can be used to create .bmp files for icons?

For icons with sub-images:
-- Is there anything special about creating a .bmp file with sub-images?
             -- or --
-- Is the .bmp file image simply divided evenly into sub-images, when the image
    file is declared/called with the last argument of %xl?

[xpmule]

First off I'd say Google search for Free software like Paint.net or Gimp
Most anything should work to make BMP's..
I use Fireworks though and it's not free but I think there is a 30 day demo, prob a demo out there for Photoshop too
actually I think Adobe offers for free a really old version of Photoshop free on their site.

Anyway there is nothing special about the bmp's it's just a picture whether it has one icon or 100.
The way it works is the theme config specifies how many sub images it has and the dimensions of them all.
So Rockbox will read it in sections one for each sub image.
So no special images need to be made for that.

Me I make my icons in 32bit PNG's then I add each icon into one big PNG that has all the icons.
The reason is so I get layers to work with.. individual objects rather than one big image the PNG will have a bunch I can edit on their own.
then when I'm ready I just export the PNG file as a different file type (24bit BMP) that flattens all the images into one big final image.
When you do a lot of work on icons that routine makes life easier.. I even labeled the sub-images too (labels for the PNG's only)

hope that helps.. good luck