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Monday. Quick Icons.
June 23rd, 2008It’s just past noon on Monday and I’m only now getting to posting something. We had guests this weekend and I’m only now recovering. I usually put in more work over the weekends, just didn’t get to it this weekend so it all got bumped.
Ok, lame apologies aside, here’s something I discovered this morning while trying to organize some new projects. It’ll appeal to you if you’re visually oriented and kind of anal-retentive about being organized. Another apology: this is Mac OS-X only. I’m on Leopard but assuming it works on Tiger too. Could be wrong. For those that are left out – sorry. (Update – I’m told this is OSX Leopard only)
I like my desktop and folders to look good. I also like them to be easily identified and since I am a visual person I’ve taken to making custom icons for important files. But this morning I just wanted a down and dirty icon for a new project folder. Here’s what I did:
1. Make an image and make it square.
2. Save it in Photoshop as a JPEG.
3. Find that JPG in the finder, click it and hit CMD+i – this will bring up an info pallette with a little thumbnail at the top. Click that and hit cmd+c (Update – Follow the instructions, and the REVERSE of the image below. I mixed it up. Sorry.)
4. Find the folder for which you want this ad hoc icon, click it, hit cmd+i, find the little thumbnail as you did in step 3, click it and hit cmd+v
5. That should paste a new icon. If you used a square you won’t have transparency issues. Now just delete the jpg image and you’re done.
Forget the square icons, how did you get those awesome camera icons?!?!?
Seriously! Even though this is a photography website, how do you make your icons for your system.
Thanks.
Mostly I just find them on sites like interfaceLIFT – http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/
I make some with a shareware program called Iconographer – the best thing to do would be to google this and find the method that works best for you.
Sorry, you said your post was for the anal-retentive, so I just have to say this.
On the picture with the cmd+c/cmd-v text, you’re going the wrong way. If you do as you show, your jpeg will be a folder icon.
Also, selecting the preview image in Get Info and pressing cmd-x will remove the custom icon.
This does not work as shown in Tiger. In the Get Info window the file preview is of the document type, not a preview of the image.
Ken, you’ve out anal-retentived me. I should correct this, but I suspect the error will have to stand, if only as an exercise in over-coming my anal-retention.
Good eye, and thanks for letting us know about Tiger.
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