The start screen icons, especially the factory ones for templates, and descriptions on how to add images seemed very vague to me.
So i dug in to it and have done a "how to" pdf about it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J8zPeMlhRe5BVFwTHHJ42IB-EUodg_7J/view?usp=sharing
you have to change the icon in the file, save it as a "normal" project file, then rename the extension to .cwt instead of .cwp. otherwise the image embedded will not change. if you open a .cwt file and a .cwp file you can see how the header of the file in the cwp contains a large MIME encoded image in the first part of the file, whereas the cwt files have the image embedded further into the file which is then used when you save the template-generated project as a cwp.
here's the sequence: