06-01-2006, 02:28 PM

I am a recent switcher from Windows and Linux. I have an enormous collection of open source icons from my time in Linux, some of which are really nice. I would like to be able to re-use as Mac icons. However, it seems that Mac icons must be in some special format, since attempting to re-use a Linux icon, which is basically a small .png image file, doesn't work. When you do the requisite Get Info on it, you don't get an icon image, just a graphics preview which is of no value.

Is there a way to take an image in .png or any other format, and make it into a Mac icon file? Thanks!

06-01-2006, 03:01 PM

Sure. If you take the icon into Photoshop and resave it as whatever the Mac icon format is, it would work.

06-01-2006, 03:07 PM

if it's a png file, you coud use pixadex. just drag and drop it, select it, and hit command + s (this will export it into the proper format). Pixadex is shareware but it allows you to demo it, you should be able to convert all of your icons

06-01-2006, 03:39 PM

I tried the Photoshop route, and oddly it works for some and not for others. It works in all cases actually, but in some cases the resulting icon is so small that it is unusable. Haven't figured out yet what makes some work nicely and some not... Meantime, I have stumbled across Iconverter-0.86, which does the job nicely. This very simple freeware reads an image file and writes out an icon (.icns) file for it. Very fast, very simple. Solves the problem!

Thought I would post here in case any other switchers have this issue. It says it works for Windows .ico files as well!