Making Icons

[®îçhå®?]

Hiya guys,
I am fairly new to the whole design thing and was wondeing how i could make icons. I have a few things that i want to make but i dont know if there are any specific programmes that are free. At the moment, i am trying to make them in photoshop but because they are irregular shapes, it automatically comes up with a white background on the thumbnail that is on the desktop. Can anyone please tell me how i can turn this off or a decent programme to use.

R

 

[Mydriasis]

most likely your not exporting in a format that supports transparency. Is the background transparent in PS?

Try PNG.

Or there is an application called IconComposer that is part of the developer tools, which are part of OS X. Its free and does exactly what you want.

 

[decksnap]

It needs to be an .icns file. Make a 128x128 transparent .png in photoshop or fireworks, and use a program like iConverter to convert it.

 

[Mal]

I've been making .icns for a while, using them for applications, but what's an easy way to put those onto a file or folder? Never have found an easy way.

jW

 

[decksnap]

Just do an apple+I on both items and copy and paste the icon from one window to the other.

 

[Mal]

No, the .icns files I create just have a generic .icns icon when I do that. I'm using Icon Composer here, btw, and the files it generates don't have the icon that I've designed as their own icon. I can replace an .icns file within an app with one of my own and it works great, and from there I can do that, but if I don't intend to put it on an app, it's a lot of work to do that and then undo it after I've copied the icon.

And just copying the png image from Fireworks or Preview doesn't seem to work either, it's got a white background and no transparency.

jW

 

[decksnap]

Hmm. You must be doing something wrong when you're generating it. Most .icns files function the way I described.

 

[Mal]

What could I be doing wrong??? I simply put the png's in the appropriate slots, and hit save. The resulting file sometimes shows up with the icon as it's icon, but only superficially. I can't copy it from the Get Info window, because it's actually a generic icon (the reason it shows the icon is because I have Show Icon Preview on). Are you using a different tool than Apple's Icon Composer?

jW

 

[dogbone]

I've had this problem in the past where the the icon in the get info is a generic icon. I now use Icon builder to make icons, which is a photoshop plug in.

However a solution to the generic icon in the get info window is to simply drop the icns file on to IconDroplet and presto problem solved.

 

[Buschmaster]

I use Iconographer. I tried others and had your same problem. I can't remember if your program was specifically one of them, though...