How to create a high quality icon for my Windows application?

Question

If you are running Windows with a higher DPI setting you will notice that most application icons on the desktop look terrible. Even some high profile application icons such as G

Answer 1

Thanks for all the suggestions!

After much trial and error the real problem here seems to be the Visual Studio 2008 Setup Project - manually setting up a link to my executable correctly uses the high resolution icon, however the link that is created by the setup doesn't use the correct icon. When setting the icon for the link in the editor it only gives me one option (index 0) which seems to be the 48x48 icon. I have tried manually adjusting the IconIndex in the .vdproj but had no luck. It seems that Visual Studio Setup Project does not support adding a link using a high quality icon.

EDIT: I can now confirm this problem. Once I moved to WiX to create the installer the link used the correct high quality icon.