Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 10:26 PM
If you’re interested in making replacement icons for Mac OS X applications, the Leopard Developer Tools received an updated version of the Icon Composer utility, which combines multiple PNG images into one ICNS file. Once exported, the combined file is suitable for use inside an application bundle, by choosing Show Package Contents from the Finder’s action menu (or a right-click) and browsing to Contents/Resources/ and replacing the appropriate ICNS file (make sure to rename your icon to match the existing one!).
To run the process the other way, first find the desired ICNS file inside the application, and open it with the built-in Preview application. Preview understands the transparency inherent to ICNS icons, and allows you to save the file as a PNG, ready to open and work on in Photoshop!
11/28/07 Update
After looking around on MacUpdate for something simple, I found img2icns, a freeware drag-and-drop icon converter that can turn a PNG image into a folder icon. With it, you can Get Info for the converted folder icon and copy and paste it onto another application or document. It’s the perfect little icon utility to go with this minimalist workflow, and it’s Leopard-ready!
This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Mac, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
ADB Mouse Conversion
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That’s awesome! But how would you get a folder icon? There’s no option to show package contents with folders…
Open the infopanel on the folder.
select the top icon (blue border).
copy.
open clipboard viewer.
save the content as .icns file.
open the icns file in preview.
save as png with alpha (psd,tiff,tga dosent work)
voila!
Awesome tip, Thomas!