tools to edit/build button & icon images?

Pardon the intro question but I am a PC developer trying to use xcode for an iphone project.

What application(s) do you folks use to create custom graphics for your buttons/toolbars/etc? In visual studio there is a built-in editor for simple graphic editing tasks. I was kind of surprised to see xcode only shows me the icons or bitmaps, but never lets me enlarge the image to see the pixel details or make changes.

I assume then there are probably some common tools everyone is familiar with that is compatible with what xcode understands/expects. What do you use?

thanks
-d

 

thanks! both of those look very good.

I just stumbled over "pixen", a free paint and animation tool designed for mobile devices. It looks quite good, but illustrator may be a must buy

-d

 

Some revised impressions:

Pixen is quite nice but does not offer free-hand rotation or scaling of a layer or selected region (only 90 degrees, flip). It also does not offer antialiasing of the composite layered image as far as I can tell.

It IS very nice and easy to use though...

-d