A program to create a large mouse cursor. Changing the mouse pointer in Windows

operating room Windows system It has big set tools for changing the design of the system. Besides everything else, in all Windows version you can change the type of cursor, and even create your own.

The article will talk about changing the pointer type mouse in versions 7, 8 and 10 of the system, which is usually called a cursor, although this is not entirely true. Pointers are stored in files with expansion.ani and.cur and they are stored in the folder Cursors. As can be seen from the extensions, the first one stores animated cursors, while the second one stores static ones.

How to set a standard mouse pointer

First, let's look at how to change the standard pointer to another one, but from the list of those installed in the system.

First of all, you need to go to . This can be done in all Windows operating systems. through start. You can click on the top ten right click mouse on start and select the required menu item.

Here we are interested in the section “ Mouse" and the bookmark " Signposts».

If there is no such item in the control panel, then in the upper right part of the window you need change viewing mode not small icons.

Before you start changing the settings, it is advisable to save the installed scheme so that changes made did not affect the performance of the system if something goes wrong.

To start changing the pointer, click on the button Review, having previously selected the mode for which the cursor will be set.

For each action select separate file. For example, you can specify what form the pointer will take in case of highlighting, waiting, selecting help, and other modes.

When downloading a ready-made set from the Internet, sometimes in the folder you can find a file with expansion.inf, which contains information about the set and is set as the topic. To do this, right-click on this file and select Install. After this, you can choose a ready-made theme.

How to create and install your own cursor

Creating your own cursors is quite simple, but you need to have minimal knowledge in creating graphics, and also have at your disposal graphics editor.

The procedure is simple:

This is not the only way. Much easier to find specialized software. There are a lot of such applications, both paid and distributed on free of charge. Usually they contain a whole set of tools for work, including creating animation, and allow you to immediately save the result in the desired format.

In today's article we will talk about aesthetic Windows side 10, namely how to change the mouse cursor. By the way, there is a funny “linguistic incident” - on the one hand, the word “cursor” means a “blinking dash” in the console command line, and the usual “arrow” is called a “mouse pointer”, on the other hand, the image files of the “mouse arrow” are physically located in the “C:\Windows\Cursors” folder. If you open this folder using Explorer, you will see that it contains two types of files. “Static” cursor images (such as a standard white arrow) have a *.cur extension, animated mouse pointers (like the “spinning circle” that appears when the computer is performing a resource-intensive task or a program is frozen) have a *.ani extension.

Initially operating system offers a number of preset cursor design options. You can select one of them like this:

Third party cursors

On the Internet you can find selections already ready-made diagrams cursors. Then use the downloaded cursor files to concrete actions using "Browse"

Creating your own static cursors

Those aesthetes who are categorically not satisfied with the options proposed by Microsoft designers can create custom cursors and integrate them in the manner described above into one of the schemes. True, for this you will have to use the tools from third party developers("built-in" in Windows graphic Paint editor does not allow you to create an image with transparent background, and there is no converter that converts *.png images into *.cur mouse pointer files by default in the system at all. To create a simple static pointer, do the following:

1. Download the archive with the installer for the free graphics editor Paint.Net, unpack it to your desktop and run it;
   
2. The installation process depends on whether you have other graphic editors on your system. If there are none, just choose the express option.
   
3. After launching the editor, open the “Image” menu and change the image size (select, for example, the 100 x 100 pixels option);
   

   

4. In the Layers toolbar, click on the plus sign and add new layer. Then select the “Background” layer and delete it by clicking on the “cross”;
   

   

5. Using the toolbar at the top left, draw an image of a cursor;
   
6. Click on the "File" menu at the top and save your work to PNG file with an arbitrary name;
   
7. The easiest way to do the "png > cur" conversion is to use an online converter. Go to the converter web page and drag and drop your artwork onto it;
   
8. In the drop-down list, select the cur extension as the output format and click the “Convert” button;
   
9. After some waiting, click the “Download” button and save the cursor file (for me the conversion took about 5 minutes, but you don’t have to wait since the service can send the finished file to you in Dropbox, Google Drive or by email);
   
10. Open Explorer and move the saved file to the “C:\Windows\Cursors” folder;
    
11. Go back to the first part of this article and integrate the index you just created into one of the standard themes.
    

    

Make a cursor. And I would like to note that any visitor to this site can safely suggest a topic for an article in the comments. If the topic is good and in demand, I will definitely write an article or lesson. But unfortunately neither in Photoshop nor in any “online photoshop” be it Pixlr or whatever, it is impossible to make a full-fledged cursor. However, you can make an image of a cursor, and then, using special magic and a special program that makes cursors, bring it to completion. As usual, I started my search with well-known search engines (see Google and Yandex), but to my surprise I didn’t find a single sensible article on this topic, except for panicky comments on forums and useless answers.

Making a cursor or icon is not difficult. I made my first cursors when I was still at school. The computer was running Windows 98, the sky was bluer and the grass was greener. I will teach you how to create a cursor in the program Photoshop, however, you can do it anywhere, even in MS Paint-e, the main thing is that your graphics editor saves translucent PNG, however, everything is in order. As usual, any of you will be able to download PSD files with layers, as well as everything that we will do in this article.

A little about the cursor

First, you need to understand that a cursor is nothing more than a rectangular piece of graphics. Of course, we only see the cursor itself, and this is because the rest of the graphics is transparent, and the Alpha channel value is reduced to zero. This means, first of all, we need a graphic editor in which you can work with translucent areas and which can save them, for example in GIF or into a translucent PNG 24. And this is, of course, Photoshop, although the cursor image can be made even in Illustrator, since it also saves in web formats. I note that the time of GIF is irrevocably running out. Unlike PNG, it has only 256 colors and does not support translucency.

Draw a cursor in Photoshop with a vector

For the most part, we don't have to draw the cursor in Photoshop or any other graphic editor, since practically none of them can save files in cursor formats cur or ani. And only special programs designed for drawing cursors can save in these formats, however, most of these programs are either hopelessly outdated and are not updated with Windows times 98, or provides poor graphics management options. That's why I suggest making graphics in good old Photoshop, instead of dealing with these ala CursorEditor PRO, which differ from Paint only in the presence of the Alpha channel.

Start by creating a work surface File > New and for our purposes the size will suit us 120 on 120px with permission 72 dpi, color mode RGB.

Creating a cursor shape

First of all, let's create the cursor shape. And a tool will help us with this, in the pocket of which everything we need is already stocked - Custom Shape Tool. And this instrument is a type vector tool in Photoshop. Details of his work can be found in my old one. Select this tool, and in the settings panel, select the cursor image. And I would like to use this particular form because it is perfect for the lesson. If you don’t have such a form, most likely you simply haven’t opened all the template images Custom Shape Tool. In the same window, click on round icon arrows and select from the menu All. This will load almost all of the tool's templates Custom Shape Tool

Select the desired arrow and press SHIFT and move the cursor over the working surface. The option is required in the tool settings Shape Layers, more details about which can be read in my article. In short, then Shape Layers creates a fill layer to which it immediately attaches a vector mask. This is exactly how a vector works in Photoshop.

Transforming the cursor in Photoshop

Now we need to transform the object. For this we choose Edit > Free transform , more about which you can read in my article, and see practical use V . Select Edit > Free transform, the transformation frame will appear. Position the cursor so that its tip is in the upper left corner.

Now let's deform the cursor a little and here's why. You've probably noticed that the standard cursor is directed not from right to left, but from bottom to top. It's not just like that. Perhaps Grandfather Freid would have explained it better, but psychologically it is much easier to perceive a pointer pointing from the bottom up. It's like starting to eat with your left hand. You can get the hang of it, but isn’t it easier to do it right away?

Select again Edit > Free transform, First, expand the cursor, then reduce it, and then click CTRL. Without releasing it, pull the corners of the transformation frame. Move the tilt angle closer to the left edge as in my picture.

Applying a style to the cursor

Until now, I haven’t written a single article specifically about using styles, so I’ll have to sort everything out. A style in Photoshop is a graphic skin that is pulled over a layer. The style consists of a number of effects that have not changed for a long time. But there is good news: they are quite enough to create almost any graphics for buttons, headers and banners. And, important note. Initially, styles were created in contrast to styles in a competing program Fireworks from non-existent now Macromedia, for working with web objects. The initial use of styles is to create buttons, banners, headers, and anything else for websites.

Choose Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options or an alternative opening is to double-click on the layer with the cursor in the Layers panel. A dialog box will appear. The window has two areas, a menu on the left side and settings on the right. Select from the left side Style and you will be taken to the saved styles that are already recorded in Photoshop. And if you don’t have anything there, then you haven’t downloaded the templates. Click on the round button with right side and select from the menu Web. This will load all the styles from the web section. And in fact, you can stop there, since you can easily choose any style, apply it and voila, beautiful cursor ready.

But I would like to create ours own style. That's what's on my mind. The cursor is in a metallic style, a sort of metallic cursor with a lot of glare. Therefore, if you have applied a style, select a white square with a red stripe - this will turn everything off, let's switch to the first effect Gradient Overlay in the same window we will proceed to the settings.

Click on the gradient bar and adjust the colors from white to blue-gray - 535b5e. In Gradient Styles, select Radial, that is, a spherical gradient. And you can position the location of the gradient on the cursor at any time, just click on work area, where the cursor is drawn, when open settings style Gradient Overlay and move the gradient with your mouse on the fly. And on my screenshot in the layers panel you will see the rest of the Style effects that are currently invisible. No problem, we will also connect them in series.

Now let's set up the effect Satin. What is this? This is a silk-like material. And the main task of the effect Satin create iridescent highlights, approximately the same as on the original material. In effect Satin select blending mode Blend Mode - Vivid Light And White color. This will create a hard contrasting shade when layering the satin over the gradient. The rest of the settings are to your liking, or use mine.

Now turn on Bevel and Emboss, it creates pseudo 3D effects by highlighting a layer on one side dark color with the other light. Due to this, visual three-dimensionality is obtained.

Just in case, here are the effects we achieved if all the settings are correct. And if you have the checkbox checked Preview, then you see a preview of the effect right below the button New Style on the right side of the window.

AND Inner Shadow to create inner shadow, emphasizing the edges of the cursor. Use your settings, or rewrite mine, it's not that important. And when your style is ready, you can always click the button New Style and save it to the style archive.

Last style - Inner Glow, which creates internal lighting. In blend mode of course Vivid Light, in setting Choke 20 size Size 8. And now my friends, we are done with styling our cursor. Click on the button New Style and save the style to Photoshop memory.

Merge layers and make the cursor smaller

We are almost finished drawing the cursor, and as you can see, unlike all cursors, similar programs we didn’t paint with a brush, we didn’t move the mouse around the work area, creating some kind of daub. All we did was draw a shape with a vector and click on the settings to create the original look of the cursor. Moreover, we have recorded a great Metallic style with highlights. Now let's move on to final stage working on the cursor. But before that, turn off the back layer in the layers panel. White background. We no longer need it, and we don’t want it to be saved along with the file. We only need a cursor and a transparent background.

Now select all layers, use SHIFT. Then go to Layers > Merge Layers I'm not afraid to leak an image and lose mine vector outline primarily because it doesn't have much value since we made it in 3 minutes. Plus, I saved the created style and can apply it to anything with one click. However, if you think that you will still need this layer, save it in PSD. That's why I merge the layers. Now we will make the cursor smaller, since most often cursors are quite small, they do not take up half the screen or even 200 px. This is their cursor meaning.

Of course, I can always use the checkbox Scale Styles in the window Image Size and Photoshop will try to scale the style, but it won’t be able to do it reliably enough and the style will still work. I want to merge the layers to convert the attached style to pixels, since it is very important for us that the small cursor looks the same as the large one. Now the layers are merged, we have only one layer with a cursor in the raster. Go to Image > Image Size and resize from 120 on 120px on 32 on 32px. And we practically made our cursor.

Saving cursor to PNG

Open File > Safe for Web and Devices and this window is specifically designed to save and optimize graphics for the web, phones and tablets. In the window that appears, you will see three areas. Middle area with image. Left area with tools. And the right area with settings. In the right pane, select PNG 24 from the drop-down menu and don't forget to check the box Transparency, which adds an alpha channel to the file, hiding part of the image. And these are all the settings for our cursor. Click OK.

How to make a cursor in CUR format

We have practically made a cursor, but it is still an image in the format PNG with the image of the cursor, and not the cursor itself. You can’t use it in the operating system, you can’t put it in the code for a website. A real cursor is, first of all, a type of system file to which a cursor picture is attached. The format of such a file depends on the operating system. For Windows they are alone for MacOS other. We'll talk about the format CUR. This is a static format for a cursor that works with Windows.

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned that programs like CursorEditor. Unfortunately, most of them are either paid or have a trial period for 30 days, A graphic capabilities All of these programs leave much to be desired. I have tried a dozen similar programs and in my opinion the best of them is IcoFX. The official website can be found here. You can download IcoFX here. Here you can see some lessons about working with this program. And the main advantage IcoFX— it can be downloaded for free and without probationary period, at least for now. It works with most icon and cursor formats for major operating systems. And her ability to create graphic design significantly higher than other old school programs. There is translucency, a lot of brushes and gradients and basic tools, but all this is nothing against the abilities of Photoshop, so I will not dwell on the program IcoFX. Just download it and let's make this cursor already!

Open and save PNG in CUR

Open in the program IcoFX our PNG. File > Open. In the dialog box select Portable Network Graphic (*.png) to see files in the format PNG. Found, click OPEN.

This is probably all that needs to be done. Now let's save this image in the format CUR. Open File > Save As and in the window that appears, select the format Windows Cursor(*.cur). And it's all. We have just created a working cursor in the required format.

Loading the cursor in Windows

I work with Windows Vista, however on others Windows settings the same. In the lower left corner of the screen, press the START button. Select Control Panel from the drop-down menu. In the window that appears, select Mouse.

In the dialog box that appears, select the tab Pointers and press the button Browse. In the new dialog box, find your cursor in the format CUR and download it. And remember that this is only the first cursor in this collection. To create a whole series of cursors, you need to draw cursors for all states of the operating system, a wait cursor, a cursor when hovering over a link, a cursor when hovering over a form with text, and so on. Or replace each one with a single one if you don’t need situational cursors.

Cursor for the site

If you want to use a cursor for a website, then first of all you need a cursor file in the format CUR, which you need to upload to the site hosting and register its location in CSS site. How to do this is written in detail on the HTMLBook website, which specializes in HTML And CSS. And remember that the format CUR will work for the site only for those users who use Windows.

Maybe next time I'll tell you how to make an animated cursor, similar to the one that appears when the operating system freezes. Before next articles Online www.site

» and select in top panel Open Control Panel, or select Control Panel from the Start menu. Switch to small or large icon view, find the Mouse shortcut and double-click it.

Of course, standard schemes cursors are not limited. There are many packages with cursors available. To install them, first download the cursor package - usually it is in the archive, and unpack the archive into “C:/Windows/Cursors/Name”, where “Name” is the name of the new cursor.
After that, in the mouse properties, still in the same “Pointers” tab, select “(none)” and in the “Settings” window, click on each type of cursor and replace it with the cursor from the downloaded archive, depending on the mouse action: main mode, selecting help , background mode, graphic highlighting, etc. After setting each element, click the "Save As" button "Scheme" and enter the desired name for the cursor package. To install the package you created, click “Apply” and “OK”.

Appearance mouse pointer depends on the scheme used in currently graphical interface operating system. This scheme contains a set of design options for the pointer and can be changed by the user through the corresponding OS component. Using the same component, you can selectively change individual pointers included in the set of the current schema.

Instructions

If you are using the Windows 7 OS version, then the shortest path to the mouse pointer settings is through the field search query in the main menu of the system. Press the Win key to open this menu, and enter the word “mouse” in the “Search programs and files” text box. The system will display a list of almost two dozen lines, among which there will be a link “Change the appearance of the mouse pointer” - click on it.

In other versions of Windows OS, after opening the main menu by pressing Win keys or by clicking on the “Start” button, find a link to launch Control Panel. With the Panel open, go to the section called “Appearance and Themes” and click the “Mouse Pointers” link in the left frame. As a result of the actions described in this and the previous steps, the “Pointers” tab of the mouse properties window will open.

Change the entire set of mouse pointers that the operating system uses in different situations by selecting one of the options in the “Scheme” drop-down list. After this, click OK and the procedure will be completed.

Cursors guide the user among objects displayed on the monitor screen. We constantly monitor his location and direct him with the mouse to the desired button or to window titles, cursors help us draw and enter text, control the playback of music and movies, and work with files and folders. Without a cursor, it's a real disaster. Well, since it is constantly looming before our eyes, maybe the time has come to give the cursor a different look? The RealWorld Cursor Editor program is a cursor editor that allows you to create and edit the appearance of a cursor, be it a regular pointer or a clock while waiting for an application response, a text cursor or a link cursor. Creating a simple pointer or a spectacular animated cursor will not take much time.

Creating Cursors

The RealWorld Cursor Editor application works with both static and animated cursor images. The program has many tools for creating and editing. Creating a cursor is possible “from scratch” - based on the user’s imagination and enthusiasm, from a picture file or from an image from the clipboard. RealWorld Cursor Editor works with layers and its main tools include pencil, color fill, text input, shape drawing, eraser, eyedropper, retouch, hot spot and perspective. You can adjust brightness, contrast and saturation to the cursor, and apply various effects. Thanks to such functions implemented in the program as connecting additional plugins, the capabilities and effects of RealWorld Cursor Editor are expanded. Add-ons can be downloaded and installed with one click from the main editor window.