Section 17. Change an Icon

17. Change an Icon

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

13 Create a New Folder

15 Rename a Folder or Document

SEE ALSO

18 Set a Color Label

One of the convenient and unique features of the Mac OS is that you can apply your own custom icons to individual documents, folders, and volumes (disks). You can copy an icon from one item to another, create your own icons from picture files, or remove custom icons from items to return them to their generic appearance.

1.	Locate the Source Image An icon can come from either of two places: a picture file copied to the Clipboard, or an existing icon copied from another document or folder. Decide where the icon is going to come from; open a Finder window and navigate to where that source item is.
2.	Copy the Source Image to Clipboard To create an icon from a picture file, first open the picture in Preview (or any other picture-viewing application that allows you to copy image data to the Clipboard). Copy the picture to the Clipboard by choosing Edit, Copy or pressing . TIP You can view the contents of the Clipboard by switching to the Finder and then choosing Edit, Show Clipboard . If the picture has been successfully copied to the Clipboard, it will appear in the Clipboard window that opens. 17. Change an Icon To copy an existing icon from another item, select that item and then choose File, Get Info (or press ). Use the mouse to select the icon in the top-left corner of the General pane of the Info window, and choose Edit, Copy or press to copy the icon to the Clipboard.
3.	Get Info on Item to Be Changed Select the document or folder whose icon you want to change. Choose File, Get Info or press . Click the icon in the top-left corner of the General pane of the Info window.
4.	Paste Image into Icon Press to paste the Clipboard's contents onto the item as its new icon.

NOTE

In Mac OS X, icons can contain 32-bit picture datared, green, blue, and alpha (transparency) channels, with 8 bits each. If a part of the icon image is transparent (the alpha channel is at maximum), that part of the icon will not be clickableclicking on that region will not select the icon. This means that if you apply a custom icon that's got a weird shape and not much non-transparent image data, it will be difficult to click the icon in the Finder.

For icons in the Dock, the whole square region of an icon responds to a click, whether it's transparent or not.

Icons in Mac OS X can be arbitrarily scaled to any size up to 128x128 pixels, so technically you only need a single image for an icon; however, icons often look best at 32x32, where some icons switch to a "lower-resolution" version for better readability at smaller sizes. Use an application like Iconographer (http://www.mscape.com) to create these multi- sized icons.