We [heart] Icons really does [heart] icons

This is the kind of article I love seeing on TUAW. The site mentioned is great and really does have really well designed icons. I laughed when I saw their replacement for Handbreak since it's great and I'm anxious to replace whatever the hell those dev's were thinking when they drew up a cocktail and pineapple. WTF?

A few questions to others. I have always gone the route of clicking "Get Info" on the app in question in the Application folder, then using copy and paste to swap out the icon in the Get Info panel. What I'm curious about is;

a) How can I keep a backup of the original icon(s) before pasting the new version in.

b) Why do some use .png and some use .icns if using the copy/paste method above. Is there an advantage to an .icns file and how do you swap that for the original if not using the method I described.

c) Is there a way to just change the icons (and Dock images in the Core Services folder) for one user account? I want to keep the stock imagery for other users on my machine.

Thanks.

You should all check out http://www.iconpaper.org/

Very nice website :)

http://www.Iconfinder.net has tons of new icons.

that’s funny. i was just on We Love Icons this morning for the first time. very nice site, well thought out.
I am also on a quest for good application icons. it seems like no one is making those. all i see that are good are system icons

Oh yeah and I forgot to mention the iconfactory (http://iconfactory.com/freeware/icon) and PixelPress Icons (http://www.pixelpressicons.com/) which hadn't been updated in a very long time but looks like it's about to make a big return with a beautiful site and hopefully some new beautiful icons to add to his/her/their collection/portfolio.

InterfaceLift hasn't had a new icon for 11 months. I think it's dead. You should frequent the icon sections of DeviantArt. While there is a lot of crap on there, a lot of good stuff gets posted too. I would love to see We Love Icons prosper though since they seem to only post the cream of the crop.

On a separate note I would like to pose a question to everybody. Does anybody know where I can get high quality icons of Windows XP icons. I have a whole bunch that were redrawn at 128x128 but I would love more and/or even larger ones. My reason for wanting this is for use with Fusion and Parallels in Unity/Coherence mode. They show the open apps icons in the dock but they are all pixelated. I know how to replace them but a lot of the times I don't have anything to replace them with because I want them to be the real deal.