How to install icons on Windows and OSX

We talk about icons everyday. We search desperately for the next holy grail of icons. Some of us even make a living out of icons. Ok so, what in the world is an icon? The word “icon” comes from the Greek word “eikon” which means image. Before the consolidation of semiotics, the word “icon” referred mainly to the pictorial depictions of religious characters, but from quite some time now (a century or two) the word refers to a picture, a drawing or an image that represents by analogy or concretely, a concept, an idea, or a word. The term is much broader and deep if you get into semiotics and the meaning of symbols, but I will leave it there. I guess you clever readers get the point.

In our beloved digital world, were anything is as it seems, an icon is any graphic symbol that represents an option for interaction between a given software and the user. Brain shift to teaching-computers-to-grandma-mode, icons are those tiny pictures on a computer screen that we have to click in order to do anything. See that colored square thingy at the bottom left of your screen? See that “X” on the upper right corner of your screen? See the 700.000 little pictures on the Iconshock site?

My old neat’n clean Iconshock desktop. There’s about 30 icons in this image.

Icons were first implemented in the mid 80’s (some historians go back to the early 70’s) as visual aids for beginner level computer users, but in less than 10 years they became the cornerstone of almost all software interfaces.  Icons are bitmaps (remember my last post?) with transparency attributes that come in various sizes so the operating system can choose which one to display at different software “states” and graphical outputs.

Icon sizes range from 16x16 pixels (taskbars, favicons, explorer detail view), 128x128 pixels (Document thumbnail view in finder), 256x256 pixels (Vista Explorer thumbnail view) to 512 (Mac Dock Shortcuts). They come in resolutions from 72 to 192 DPI and support 16 and 256 colors with transparency. All these images are contained inside the icon file.

You can create icons from vector graphics or bitmap images, but irremediably, you need the final output to be an icon file so you can use it inside an Operating System.

Icon formats, say .ICO and .ICNS, are not image formats per se, they are rather containers of a group of the same image in different sizes, so the Operating System can choose depending on its needs. For example, Windows will call the 16x16 image for the task bar, while MAC OSX will call on a 512x512 pixel image for their dock shortcuts. Also, there are special library file formats that contain a group of icons. ICL for Windows, and RSRC for MAC.

Since each O.S. uses a different icon file format, there are many programs out there, both free and commercial to convert an icon from one operating system to another.

IcoFX. Freeware

Axialis Iconworkshop. Commercial.

Although you can create your icon images in any Bitmap or vector package, You need specialized software to create the icon files. Professionally speaking, the best source format is PNG, as it supports 256 colors + Alpha Channel. But you can build an icon from GIF or TIFF images also.

Gimp. Free Distribution. You don’t need anything else. A real software monster.

MicroAngelo. Commercial.

Iconsushi. Freeware. A little old but still effective.

Iconbuilder. Commercial. Plug-in for Photoshop.

Windows icons come in the .ico file format. There are two ways I know of to change your icons.

Option one:

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Choose the folder you want to change and hit right click.
3. Go to Properties.
4. Under Properties, go to the customize tab.
5. Click on the last option, change icon.
6. Violá! Browse for the ICO file of your choice.

Option Two

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Go to the tools menu and choose folder options.
3. Under folder options go to the file type tab and choose advanced.
4. Under advanced, choose change icon. Violá! Browse for you new ICO file.

Mac Icons come in .icns format. I only know one way of customizing your icons.

1. Select the volume, application, folder, or file with your new icon, just click the icon to select it.
2. From the File menu, choose Get Info or press Command-I to open the Info window.
3. Click the icon in the upper-left corner of the Info window to select it.
4. From the Edit menu, choose Copy or press Command-C.
5. Select the volume, application, folder, or file whose icon you want to replace.
6. From the File menu, choose Get Info or press Command-I.
7. Click the icon in the upper-left corner.
8. From the Edit menu, choose Paste or press Command-V to replace the icon.

After reading some forum users all around the web, I have realized that installing icons is kind of a mystery topic. Everyone thinks its so easy that everybody is ashamed to ask how its done. That is the reason why I wanted to rush in this post so all of you can have a simple guideline about the basics on icons. Please give me feedback so I can improve and feed this article with the info you might want to know. Don’t worry if I’m not emphasizing on the actual creation process of a professional icon set, since we are working on posting a cool video tutorial soon. This article is mainly just an easy to understand lead for all icon lovers. Icons are really a vice don’t you think?. Good bye for now. Have a nice weekend.