How to Make Your Own Icon

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How to Make Your Own Icon

Posted 06/07/2007 at 11:39:00am | by Leslie Ayers

Step 2. Right-Size Your Image

Open your image file and make sure it's the right size. The largest the width or height can be is 128 pixels. Select Image > Image Size (or press Option-Command-I). Uncheck Resample Image and, under Image Size, change the resolution to 72 Pixels/Inch. Check Resample Image and, under Pixel Dimensions, change the larger of the height or width to 128 Pixels.

Make sure your image doesn't exceed 128 pixels in width or height.

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Step 3. Get on the Grid

Open IconBuilder's Macintosh grid file (Macintosh.psd), located in /IconBuilder Essentials/IconBuilder Grid Files. Turn off the Sample icon layer by clicking the eye icon on the left. To place your image on the icon grid, click to your image and select it by pressing Command-A (or Select > All). Press Command-C (or Edit > Copy) to copy the contents. Click back to the grid image (Macintosh.psd) and press Command-V (or Edit > Paste) to paste the image onto a new layer.

Use the Move tool to drag the image completely inside the large square on the left. To run the IconBuilder Assistant Action, press Option-F9 (or Window > Actions), select the Generate Macintosh Standard Action under IconBuilder 8 Assistant.atn, and click Play (the right-facing triangle) at the bottom.

Move your pasted image so it fits within the boundaries of the large square.

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COMMENTS: 6

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Custom icons
Submitted by Walid (not verified) on Thu, 2007-06-07 13:23

Nice. Here's the way I do it:
Required software: Icon Composer, which I believe is in the OSX devkit, icns2icons, free, and of course, photoshop.
Open the image of your future icon in P'Shop, and copy the layer (Apple-J). Drag the "Background" layer to the garbage can icon in the lower-right corner of the layers palette. Get rid of What you don't want in the remaining layer. If you want a drop shadow, make it in a new layer which you'll place underneath the one with your image. Crop the file as close to the edges as you can. Make the canvas square in "canvas size". Save one 128x128pxls copy of the file, one 48x48, one 32x32, one 16x16, ALL IN .PSD FORMAT to preserve transparency.
Open Icon Composer. Double-click the 128x128 space on the window, and find the 128x128pxls psd file. Do the same for the 48x48, 32x32 and 16x16 spaces and click yes to incorporate the mask every time. Save the icns file. You now have a generic icon. Drag the file on the icns2icon icon and Shazaam! You he an icon ready to use.
Not better or worse, just different.
Enjoy
Walid

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Cool, thanks Walid
Submitted by Leslie Ayers on Thu, 2007-06-07 15:51

The coolest part about your way is that it's free! :-)

Thanks for sharing.

~Leslie

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Yet another free way
Submitted by Sahyun (not verified) on Wed, 2007-08-22 05:10

Once you have your .PSD image with transparency, drag the file into Pic2Icon (free, http://osxiconeditor.phatcode.net/Pic2Icon.html; the site has an IconEditorPack with links to the above mentioned icns2icon and Gimp ). This turns the picture into a good image you can copy in "Get Info" and paste for the folder or file icons in their Get Info panes. The image can also be brought into Icon Composer to create your .icns icon.

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Make it completely free...
Submitted by jkent (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-26 08:20

Use GIMP. Free replacement for photoshop that is easily good enough for this kind of thing.

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