[Jacket]

as my sig says, I'm recent switcher to Mac OS X from a PC.

I'd like to know how to give a directory a custom icon that I've made.

With that, I'd like to know what formats I can design an icon to use. does it have to be a BMP, JPG, or can you design a vector based graphic in PDF format and create an icon that way -- which I assume would allow for seamless scaling of the icon...

this is probably an easy thing to do, but again, I'm new at this.

[iRebound]

dude try IconBuilder

[moonmonkey]

Originally posted by Jacket:
as my sig says, I'm recent switcher to Mac OS X from a PC.

I'd like to know how to give a directory a custom icon that I've made.

With that, I'd like to know what formats I can design an icon to use. does it have to be a BMP, JPG, or can you design a vector based graphic in PDF format and create an icon that way -- which I assume would allow for seamless scaling of the icon...

this is probably an easy thing to do, but again, I'm new at this.

Check this out
http://homepage.mac.com/woodhams/icon_help.htm

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by Jacket:
this is probably an easy thing to do, but again, I'm new at this.

Yes, you will be constantly amazed on how easy things are to do on a mac.

You can copy any type of bitmap-graphic and paste it to the icon of the Get Info-dialog.

You probably want to be more sophisticated than that though, with editing masks and such, so go and search versiontracker for Icon Editor.

IconBuilder Pro for Photoshop is highly recommended though.

[Superchicken]

My best suggestion actually would be make a 128/128 graphic in Photoshop or Fireworks, leave the background transparent. get it how you want it to look, fireworks is great cause you can shrink it yourself to see how it'll look if you're using vectors in fireworks (I still can't believe some people use anything other than vectors in Fireworks) get the image how you want it to look then save it. You'll probably get the program's default icon and junk. But then turn around and download pic2icon just search on Google for it I can't remember the link but it's under the first or second link you get from google anyway.

Download the program then drag your picture's icon onto the program, It'll build a 128/128 thumbnail of your picture, which if you've got it at 128/128 is a pixel for pixel thumbnail

It's a sweet program, and it gets rid of all the trouble dealing with different masks and all that. But if you don't wanna bug around with that you can always just copy and paste the icon from an editor into the info window of the icon.

command I on any icon will open it's info window and you can copy other icons from there or paste new icons by just clicking on the icon.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
IconBuilder Pro for Photoshop is highly recommended though.

Nah, it's way too complex for a newbie. I'd recommend Mscape's Iconographer. It's much more flexible for all kind of users.

IconBuilder isn't as great as everyone is saying it is

[MindFad]

Iconographer is great and easy to use. I'd reccomend IconBuilder, which is what I use (has lot of great options, and I find it easy to use). There's also IconComposer, which comes free with the Apple Developer tools. Just make your icon tiffs (with transparency) at the proper sizes, and the use IconComposer to compose and export the icon. I believe that's how Mike Matas does his icons. Simple and free (as long as you have the dev. tools, which are also free). Good luck.