What to use to create a favour icon?

A favour icon file favicon.ico is an image file. But, the file type is not one of file types in a regular image editor such as Photoshop. What is the normal procedure of producing the file?

Thanks.

I use MSPaint (mspaint.exe) to create a 16 X 16 .bmp image and
call it "favicon.bmp". Then I use IRFanView ( http://www.irfanview.com/ )
to convert the .bmp to .ico

In the saving of an .ico, you can also specify a transparency color.
Save-As: favicon.ico

It works great and it's free... you already have mspaint, and IrfanView
is also free.

Why not use the tool at favicon.com to create it for you?

Both both for your information.

I use Photoshop to make the image at it's normal size, then go to the website below, upload the image, and it will let you download your imae as a .ico.

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon