Everyone loves to customise their desktop. Most people like to set up shortcuts to their favourite folders so they can quickly open 'My Documents' from their desktop without having to navigate to the folder through Explorer.

However, it's not easy finding the right icons for your shortcut folders. Unless you've got the time (and the skills) to design your own icons, you might have to pay for commercial icons or commission an artist to design them for you.

There is another way. Most applications contain a number of icons designed by professional artists. Icon Scanner will enable you to dig deep into these applications and extract the icon (or icons) that you want for your collection.

You can also use the tool for converting images to icons and much more.

Note that extracting icons from commercial applications is illegal, although few software suppliers will object to you using their icons for a strictly personal non-commercial use.