Ticket Options

Question Profile

Question Details

TICKET ARCHIVE -> Making Icons

dublnrox23 - Apr 9, 2008 - 11:44 pm

This is an insanely picky question - and possibly difficult to describe. So I've been using "preview" to crop pictures and use them for icons. The goal is to cleanly crop circular images (like an mp3 player) so that when I copy the image to the "Get Info" of the icon drive I'd like to change (my usb mp3 player), that only the picture of mp3 player shows up as the icon, instead of the mp3 player and the white remnants of the background of the photo I got from online. Preview is the only program I've found that will actually crop out the background (once I save, I just copy the background of the updated icon that preview creates for the jpeg, then i copy and paste that icon to the icon of my usb mp3 player drive). Photoshop doesn't seem to create a image with a clear background when it saves and creates an icon for the file.

Basically, preview doesn't crop corners (since the crop function is only rectangular in its selection). Is there any program that I can use to perform this function - preferably free?

earthsaver - Apr 10, 2008 - 10:12 am

What version of Mac OS X are you using? (not in your profile). The version of Preview in 10.5/Leopard adds the ability to easily select and crop out background colors.

Photoshop can create image previews in file icons. I suppose it's a preference item somewhere in the app.

You might want to try using one of the various icon-making applications. Iconfactory makes Icon Builder, a plug-in for Photoshop that's probably overkill for you.

Search VersionTracker and you'll find lots of apps associated with creating icons, including img2icns and FastIcon. Preview also can save to ICNS if that's useful. What you're not getting here, necessarily, is more than one resolution of file, which is normally necessary in icons so they appear at the correct scale in different views. More exploration.

- Ben

dublnrox23 - Apr 10, 2008 - 11:21 am

That is strange, I just recently updated my profile to say 10.5.2. Nonetheless, I just updated my profile as of yesterday so maybe it took some time to process.

Thank you for the help though - I will try some of the plug-ins or other apps if I cannot get preview to work. For using preview, do you have any suggestions for selecting in a non-rectangular way (sometimes I can't see the forest through the trees).

earthsaver - Apr 10, 2008 - 2:37 pm

Find Instant Alpha and Extract Shape in the Select button's menu. This hint might interest you.

dublnrox23 - Apr 10, 2008 - 3:10 pm

Perfect! Instant alpha the white corners, once the picture is saved, it can then be dropped into the img2icons program. It provides an .icons file that allows for a 'copy-able', background removed image!

Thanks for the help!