Filed under: How-tos
I love trying out new desktop icons from sites like the Iconfactory. In fact, my copy of Pixadex is bursting with nearly 3,000 icons. I guess it was inevitable that I'd eventually want to try to make my own.Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Conner said 2:04PM on 2-26-2007
Ha! 3,000? I have nearly 26,000. I just love customizing, and I bet a lot of those are duplicates.
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ivan raszl said 2:21PM on 2-26-2007
You should also check out this tutorial about how to create icons from an artistic point of view by Cian Walsh:
http://creativebits.org/photoshop/keyfob_anatomy_of_an_icon
Also read these two interviews with two excellent icon designers:
http://creativebits.org/icon_designer_jonas_rask
http://creativebits.org/2005/03/cb-interview-cian-walsh.html
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dave said 7:31PM on 2-26-2007
IMNSHO this is much more complicated than it needs to be and the article could be trimmed down to almost nothing. First of all, Apple's Icon Composer application will properly open Photoshop PSD files that include transparency. So there's no reason to export your icon as a transparent TIFF or anything else, this cuts out most of the article.
Basically the entire article could be cut down to this:
Create an icon in Photoshop.
Drag your .psd file into Icon Composer.
That's it. Forget about everything else, it's way more complicated than it should be.
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mark said 9:01PM on 2-26-2007
And where, dave (#4), does one get Icon Composer?
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Leslie said 12:39PM on 2-27-2007
Cool -- I just made (borrowed) some icons for Gmail.app:
http://osx.iusethis.com/app/gmailapp
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dave said 4:11PM on 2-27-2007
Mark,
Icon Composer is a free utility from Apple that you get when you install the Developer Tools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Developer_Tools#Icon_Composer
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Aaron Yates said 9:44PM on 2-27-2007
While I could never justify Pixadex I have just about 200 megs of icons, about 100+ of those icons are my own.
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Dimebag said 7:47AM on 2-28-2007
@mark Icon Composer comes with the Developer Tools that came with the OS. Just install and you are on your way!
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mark said 3:03AM on 3-02-2007
thanks, dave and dimebag, for explaining about icon composer.
-mark
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giselle said 10:09PM on 3-31-2007
I am a first time user of macs and bought the mac OS X, my question is would I too have Icon Composer already somewhere on my mac? I searched in the finder and it didn't come up. I would really like to have it so I would really appreciate the help:)
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