Windows Icons

I made some really nice icons for my desktop. My question is: How do I make the shortcut icons appear on the desktop without the little white curved arrow indicating that it's a short cut?

Also, regarding the icons themselves, I have infranview (sp???) and managed to make some noce icons like I said before. Only the images I captured to make the nice icons were adjusted just so that no resizing was necassary.

Now I'm trying to alter those icons to provide a little variety by adding a glowing sphere in the middle of one or a starburst in another one. When I make those on paintbrush and paste them to ifranview (sp?), the image is stretched somewhat so, instead of a glod ring (let's say) I get a gold egg-like looking icon.

 

TweakUI has a user interface that will allow you to display the shortcut icon without an arrow.

http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp

Also when you resize things with Irfanview, pay attention to the aspect ratio. You may have to use "preserve aspect ratio" or you may have to tweak it to satisfy your needs. It may be easier to size things proportionately with Irfanview than Paint.

 

Well, paintbrush is the program I use to add details to the icons.

 

I would say what you should do is to look for an Icon Editing Utility.
What is really good about these is that at the least, you can get rid of that awful white background.
Have a look here and see if you find something useful.
http://home.att.net/~willowbrookemill/pricelesswarealphabetized.html#Graphics