How to convert Mac icons to WinXP

M

mavis

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Now for my tutorial on porting MacOSX icons to WinXP.

For this conversion you will need a graphics editor such as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop, a (great) freeware program called Iconshop, and a file expander called Stuffit-Expander. Be sure to grap the 1.20 version of Iconshop, btw, as it is the only one that supports alpha channels (transparency). I will be using Photoshop 6.0 as my graphics editor for this tutorial.


Step One:
Find MacOSX icons. lol - Seriously though, there are a few good websites out there, for starters try XIcons, and MMIcons. Ok, once you've found the file and downloaded it, you'll notice that it has a weird extension... .sit or .hqx - that brings us to step two: decompression

Step Two:
To uncompress the downloaded icons, you'll need Alladin's Stuffit-Expander. (don't worry, it's free...) lol - Once you've got it installed, you need to set it up correctly. On the "Cross Platform" tab (in Options), you should make it look like this: Convert text Files... NEVER; Save Macintosh files in Macbinary... When a file contains a resource fork; Modification of file extensions... NEVER. Now, go ahead and uncompress the file.


Step Three:
Once you've uncompressed the file, you've got a bunch of extension-less icons, right? Here's where Iconshop comes in. Open it up and use the explorer pane on the left to navigate to the folder the icons are in, or simply drag them into the work area (lower right panel). On the top is a pull down menu called "Format" - select the largest available format to view (often, OSX icons come in 128x128 and 48x48, so choose the 128 to view - NOT "All Formats"). You should see your icon now, looks good right? Before you export it, you want to change a few settings... Click "View|Options" and on the "Import" tab, select "Top Left-Most Pixel" as transparent, and "Convert" Alpha Channel. Now on the "Export" tab, change the transparent color to near black, I use Red:0 Green:0 Blue:2. On the next tab "Macintosh," I have both boxes checked.

Now, right-click on your icon, and select "Export As..." Export it in .tif format (to preserve the transparency)... Open up the tiff file in Photoshop and we're at step 4 :)

Step Four:
Your icon might look weird in Photoshop - but don't worry - it's just fine. You now want to resize the icon to something you can use like 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, and 72x72. Just go to "Image|Image size" and change it to 72x72. Now, "File|Save As" and save it as 72.tif. Repeat the process for each size, down to 16x16.

*tip: if you are going to be porting more than one icon, it may be advantageous to create an action in Photoshop... it will automate the process. To do this, open the .tif you exported from Iconshop. Now, before you start resizing it, click "Window|Show Actions" - now, on the "actions" window, click the page-looking icon on the bottom, right - called "Create new action" - name the action whatever you want, you can even assign it a shortcut key(s) - then hit "Record". Go ahead and resize the .tif, 72x72 all the way down to 16x16, saving it each time as the size (72.tif, 64.tif, etc) Now, click the stop recording button in the Action window. Voila! You've created an action, so next time you've got a .tif to resize, just press your shortcut key that you assigned to the action, and it'll do it for you in about .5 seconds. :)

Step Five:
You should now have 5 or 6 .tif's on your desktop or wherever, all different sizes, right? Now, go back to Iconshop and click "File|New" - drag each .tif to the work area - all 5 or 6 sizes. If you can't see them, change the "Format" drop down menu at the top to "All Formats" ... Once you've got all of the .tif's in the work area, click "Edit|Select All," right click on one of them and select "Join" - then, right click on it again, and select "Export As..." and you should have only one option available: exporting as an icon. Save it, and you're done! Good job!!

*Tip: Once you've converted several icons, you can drag them all to the work area in Iconshop, and select "File|Save As" and save them all as an .icl (Icon Library).




This tutorial is a work in progress, so if anybody has any tips or if any of this was unclear, let me know! Also, props to Dazzla, Scorcho, and Fooood (all from neowin.com) for clueing me into this in the first place :)

mavis
 
Thanks a lot mavis. I've been busily downloading some really beautiful icon packages from MMICON and the tutorial is a must.

ta ta

TOK:D
 
hmm i got a problem everytime i drag a icon in the the window i cant see it and i cant change the format ? any ideas ?
 
Originally posted by BloodLust DWS
hmm i got a problem everytime i drag a icon in the the window i cant see it and i cant change the format ? any ideas ?

Did you check step three: the "Format" drop down menu? Click on it and it'll display the available formats, just click on the largest one to view only it, and export it...

lemme know if that works...

mavis
 
i gotit mavis thx i converted my first set dam its alot of work but very satisfiying when your done ill post a preview when in done complelty :)


OBTW i had to use the new alfa to be able to see them ? not sure why !
 
Originally posted by BloodLust DWS
OBTW i had to use the new alfa to be able to see them ? not sure why !

yeah, it's a limitation of earlier versions - I mentioned it in the first paragraph of my tutorial :)

anyway, post a preview of your work when you're finished - I'm anxious to see!!

mavis
 
alright, well, i followed all the steps, but when i open the .tif in my photo editor, it's not transparent....whatever should be transparent is changed to the almost black color......i have MGI Photosuite....is there any free or demo editor that i can get that will keep the transparency....the image is transparent when viewed through windows explorer, but the minute i open it in photosuite, it's not.......any help here would be great...by the way, mavis, excellent job on the tutorial...the transparecy thing is the only problem i had
 
Originally posted by mavis
Step Four:
Your icon might look weird in Photoshop - but don't worry - it's just fine.

that's exactly what I was talking about. :) Your transparency might not show up, being replaced instead by black/near-black. In Photoshop, you can "fix" this by simply clicking on the Alpha Channel tab, to 'Show Alpha Channel' ... If your photo editor supports transparency, you're just fine. You just haven't selected the option to show the alpha channel, which is why you're getting the black.

If you can't find a way to view the alpha channel in your editor, just try finishing the tutorial and see if the black is still there in the final product (icon). My guess is, it won't be - the same 'problem' you're having threw me off too, at first (and frustrated the HELL out of me, lol) - but it's really not a problem after all...

:) hope that helps...

mavis
 
Well, i'm not at home right now, or i would try the alpha channel thing immediately, but i went all the way through the steps, and every time i saved it when i was resizing, it saved it as the black color, so when i went to join the tifs and save them as an icon, the icon is now the black color , the only size that isn't is the 128x128 since that was the original tif, and had not been edited......it may be that my editor doesn't support transparency.....you know of any that i could get a trial version of or somethin that's freeware, i really don't want to go buy a new image editor, since all i really use it for is editing scanned photos (sharpening, softening, etc.) thanks for the help though, and whatever else you can think of would be greatly appreciated
 
thanks Mavis!

worked like a charm, i'm going to convert a set called "actual" from iconfactory, they look pretty cool so far.
 
Thanks

Just wanted to say Thanks for such a detailed step-by-step on how to do this. It works great.:D I have been wondering how to get started for a long time. Thanks again.
 
RESHACK ???

Hi guys !

here are sooooo many request from guys who wanna change
the XP-Icons (Folder, HD, ...) but there are not able to use
RESHACK and edit the files by there own, my question, is it possible
to download complete patched Shell32.dll ???

(I know they are 10-15 MB, but look at all the requests here)

Great job everybody, outstanding work !

Best regards,
BFC
 
OMG. Thank you so much for this turorial.!!!!! I found one exactly like it somewhere, but whoever wrote it, excluded step 2!!!!! i was stumped for quiet a while, until i ran across it a few days ago!!!! :)

so far converted WOA 1, 2, and 3. Since i have a OSXG4Mac, i can port a shitload of stuff from it to here... ;)
 
Bad ICON

done all that, but: at the end when its an icon the view is just cloudy/misty...

what can be the problem?
 
It Didn't Work

I got to step 3, but the icons are not recognizable by Iconshop. It will not open the mac icons, plus it will not give me the FORMAT option either. HELP!
 
Re: It Didn't Work

Originally posted by lordcarter
I got to step 3, but the icons are not recognizable by Iconshop. It will not open the mac icons, plus it will not give me the FORMAT option either. HELP!

same problem, and I have the alpha
 
Re: Re: It Didn't Work

Originally posted by Jz1397-4


same problem, and I have the alpha



did you do this step? (see below) If you don't configure stuffit expander first, iconshop will not see the icons properly.

From the tutorial:

"Once you've got it installed, you need to set it up correctly. On the "Cross Platform" tab (in Options), you should make it look like this: Convert text Files... NEVER; Save Macintosh files in Macbinary... When a file contains a resource fork; Modification of file extensions... NEVER. Now, go ahead and uncompress the file."
 
yea, and it says that it is an unknown format. and yea stuffit is configed corectly. Post screen shots of what things should look like, when the files are extracted, they just stay File. Is that correct?
 

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