Axialis IconWorkshop is well known and most popular commercial solution for icon creating purposes.

 I use it personally and i highly recommend it. Also you can integrate it easily with Photoshop as plugin.
Description: With IconWorkshop™ make your own icons for Windows®, MacOS® and Unix®.

It creates Windows® icons up to 256×256 for Windows Vista™ and Macintosh® icons up to 512×512 for Leopard (MacOS® 10.5).

Unix® uses PNG icons. IconWorkshop creates PNG images with alpha channel in a few clicks including from existing Windows® and Mac OS® icons.

The new generation of icons uses variable transparency (alpha channel).

This feature permits creating beautiful icons with smooth borders and shadows. You need a professional tool to create such icons. Axialis IconWorkshop™ has been designed with one goal in mind: “Icon Quality”.

Axialis IconWorkshop (formerly AX-Icons) is a powerful tool designed to Create, Extract, Convert, Manage and Redistribute Windows Icons.You can create, load and save all Windows Icons (ICO) and Libraries (ICL). Axialis IconWorkshop is a software that create, extract, convert and manage icons. Axialis IconWorkshop supports the new Windows XP Icons with Alpha Channel images (a.k.a. Smooth Transparency).

Also, youll be able to open Macintosh Icons and convert them to Windows format.
Main features:
- Ability to create icons compatible with all versions of Windows including the latest

XP format with alpha channel
- Supports images with alpha channel to create icons (smooth transparency, shadows and image borders)
- Customize Windows icons. Adjust Windows icon size. Repair or rebuilds Windows icon cache.
- Transfer images from Adobe Photoshop using a plug-in (through memory - no more temporary PSD file)
- Reads Macintosh icons from 16x16 mono to OS-X 128x128 alpha channel

thumbnail format. Save them for Windows.
- Supports ICL Icon Libraries Create/Load/Save
- Imports/Exports Adobe Photoshop PSD images with layers
- Imports/Exports PNG and BMP with smooth transparency alpha channel
- Import/Export Adobe Photoshop PSD images with layers
- Batch create PNG, PSD or BMP images from icons (several icons at once)
- Batch create Windows icons from images or Macintosh icons (several icons at once)
- Batch convert Macintosh icons to Windows icons (several icons at once)
- Create icon or library snapshot images (create an image showing all the image formats

embedded in an icon or library)..
- Contains several icon image filters (blur, smooth, sharpen, details, contour, emboss...)
- Contains several icon image adjustments (Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Contrast...)
- Contains several icon image tools (Resize, Rotation at any angle, flip...)
- Drop shadow effect to create Windows XP compliant icons
- Enhanced color swatch/palette system compatible with Adobe and Jasc color files.
- Create an icon with all its formats from another icon image in one operation (easy-to-use wizard).
- Create an icon with all its formats from an extarnal image file in one operation (easy-to-use wizard).
- Create an icon from a screen capture
- Create ICL icon library
- Open any executable file (EXE, DLL, OCX...). Ability to change icons embedded in executable files.

Download Axialis IconWorkshop v6.50