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Monday, March 12, 2007

Free Icon Creator For Mac OS X

I've always wanted to create my own Mac OS X icons eversince I found a few cool ones while surfing for some nice artwork at DeviantArt.com. My problem was that I couldn't find a FREE application that could let me do so. The only thing I could find was IconBuilder by the IconFactory. It's a plugin for Adobe Photoshop designed to help you easily create icons. Price tag: $79(USD). Ouch! As much as I wanted to create my own icons, I wasn't willing to shell out that much money. Of course IconBuilder does come with a few extra features such as the ability to create 1024x1024 icons (that's LARGE - if your display has a resolution of 800x600, your icons would actually be BIGGER than your desktop) as well as the ability to create icons for Windows (can't imagine what I'd use that feature for). But really, all I wanted was a simple icon creator. And finally, after months of searching, I found Pic2Icon. Developed by Mike Margolis, Pic2Icon is an application that allows you to create icons out of picture files (supports TIFF, JPG, PNG and many other formats). And it's FREE! Yey! It also works great and has easy drag and drop functionality.

To create an icon, drag your picture file into the Pic2Icon well (for this example, I used the apple from the PinoyMacLovers logo, which I saved as a PNG file with a transparent background).


Voila! Pic2Icon turns the actual picture into its own icon, retains the transparency and applies anti-aliasing (prevents jagged edges).

Pic2Icon was created way back in 2002. The developer site seems to be unavailable now. But if you read the readme file, here's an exerpt from what the developer has to say about the cost of the application:
Besides being 100% freeware, Pic2Icon is 'Get Mike an internship at Apple doing Cocoa development'ware. Basically, whoever gets me the coolest internship at Apple this summer gets a registered copy of all future versions of Pic2Icon.

Thanks for developing this app, Mike Margolis. I do hope you got that Apple internship. :)

[UPDATE 2011-01-04]
Pic2Icon is a pretty old app and hasn't been updated in awhile. For something newer, you might want to try Img2Icns. You can download the free version that exports to .icns files and folder icons. The pro version lets you export iPhone icons and favicons, and lets you convert icons into images.

Also check out:
- Cute Mac Icons
- More On Icon Creators For Mac OS X
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Posted by pinoymaclover at 3/12/2007 04:34:00 PM

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome! Its just what I was lookig for!

1/11/2008 5:00 AM
pinoymaclover said...

Glad this article helped you out. :)

1/14/2008 1:14 PM
Anonymous said...

Yep, I got that job at Apple and I worked there for 6 years. And wouldn't you know it, my girlfriend is Pinay :)

6/20/2008 7:12 AM
pinoymaclover said...

Oh wow that's great! :)

6/21/2008 12:48 PM
Anonymous said...

it doesn't work...
i drag image into the well, and nothing happens. what am i doing wrong?

6/29/2008 7:05 AM
Anonymous said...

I thought it didn't work either, but it did. The picture you dragged in is now the icon, it just did it really fast. Bring up the folder or files info and then just drag your picture to the icon you want changed.

7/13/2008 9:06 PM
Delibar Test said...

If you need an easy / fast way to create / apply an icon

check

Img2icns - Icon Maker

10/29/2008 6:47 AM
Anonymous said...

Excellent post, thanks!

11/13/2008 5:16 PM
Anonymous said...

I dragged my picture into the well and nothing happened. What's wrong?

8/13/2009 5:47 AM
Anonymous said...

when i open it, it comes up in code!
what can i do

11/17/2009 6:31 AM
Mike said...

Your link to PicIcon is broken. I found this through searching:

http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/PicIcon-Download-5734.html

Is it the same program?

1/21/2010 10:14 PM
pinoymaclover said...

Thanks, Mike! Yeah based on the screenshots it looks like the same app.

1/24/2010 10:28 PM
Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info!!! I found a bunch of very complicated ways to do this but this is by far the easiest way! Thank you sooo much!

12/19/2010 10:09 AM
Anonymous said...

Can you also draw your own drawings in this?

12/31/2011 5:24 AM

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