OT: Making Application Icons

[Sivakatirswami]

Before I start a research project, let me ask: if your platform is  
Mac OSX and you want to make application icons for both Mac and  
Windows: what are our best tools?

= some balance between
-easy to use,
-produces nice icons,
-not too expensive and
-doesn't have a UI 400 tools of which you only use 5 :-)

I would typically start with some Illustrator file from our design  
team.. and then... ??

Sivakatirswami