Comments on: OS X: Convert Any Application Icon to 512 x 512 Image File

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:04:02 +0000

Sorry “Anthony’s Ghost” . Re-reading my post I could have clarified what separtates my post.

My point is for most items you don’t even have to “get-info”. Just copy the application itself and do the rest as stated in preview.

By: Anthony's Ghost

Anthony's Ghost — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:33:19 +0000

Anthony, this is the ghost of Christmas past. You need to stop writing what’s been said thrice already.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:55:11 +0000

The absolute simplest way to do this. Go to the location of the icon (Applications folder, unless you put it elsewhere). Copy it. Open Preview. If you go under the File menu, you’ll see it says “Make New from Clipboard”. The application is there, full-size, transparency, the whole works!!

To save yourself a trip to the App folder, do this. If the app is in your dock, just command click on it, and it’ll bring it up in a new Finder window.

By: Vagelis

Vagelis — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:11:37 +0000

I am using preview.app to do the same thing.
Open the original icon in Preview and then save as PNG wherever you want it.

For those of us that prefer the mouse, plus you avoid the duplication. :)

By: Victor

Victor — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:52:32 +0000

can you put a jpeg image as an apple application icon. Someone please write to my email at johsviesantos@yahoo.com Thank You

By: Fernando

Fernando — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:32:40 +0000

Great tip! Thanks!

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:46:03 +0000

You can also use Candybar (http://www.panic.com/candybar) to store these icons and export into Photoshop. Just drag the icns file into the candybar window and its now ready to be archived.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:19:59 +0000

Y would you be using windows? and do this with 10.5.4 on the mac.

By: United Voices

United Voices — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:02:47 +0000

can this be done in windows too?

By: BittBox

BittBox — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:51:41 +0000

WOW,

I had no idea that Preview could do this.
Thanks for all the tips everyone :)

~Bitt

By: Esben Thomsen

Esben Thomsen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:45:02 +0000

wtf!

I think most of you needs to learn your mac osx “abc”.. preview app, which have followed OS X since its birth, can do this as well and in same resolution and tranparency etc.

Its alot worse the other way around, making a icns, which oddly isn’t supported.

By: toby

toby — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:28:24 +0000

This is a great tip! No more trawling Google images. Horray!

Nice one!

By: Bep

Bep — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:11:52 +0000

It’s amazing how nobody read previous comments when posting one :p

Maybe it’s because i said “aperçu” instead of “preview” for the app :p

By: mf

mf — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:04:37 +0000

this is a cluttered approach. there is an easier way. and i mean _easy_ way:
1. locate the icon you want
2. right click > Get Info ( or apple + i )
3. click on the icon in top left corner and copy it ( apple + c )
4. open Preview and File > New From Clipboard ( or apple + n )
5. choose the size you want and File > Save as… and pick PNG with alpha

that’s it :P works on 10.5.4, and i assume on older ones too :P

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:58:04 +0000

I think you can use ~/Desktop/… instead of /Users/username/… in the terminal. I can’t check on a Mac right now, but on most Unix-based operating systems, “~” can be used as a synonym for the current user’s home directory.

By: Andris

Andris — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:44:48 +0000

There is a little free program for doing the same thing: IconGrabber.
No need to use Terminal, but of course this is a helpful option!
Thanks!

By: Brad Ruggles

Brad Ruggles — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:48:09 +0000

Great tip! Thanks!!

By: tenmonkey

tenmonkey — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:44:34 +0000

Great tip! thank you! :)

By: Gus Mueller

Gus Mueller — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:25:39 +0000

You could also drag and drop the application on Acorn (with the cmd-option keys down), and it’ll open up a little image browser for the app. Find the icon, double click on it and do a web export to your favorite format.

Here’s a little movie: http://gusmueller.com/stuff/Aperture2Acorn.mov

You could also use Preview to do the same thing (after opening up the app package and finding the icon).

Disclaimer: I wrote Acorn, so I’m obviously biased :)

By: Lucy

Lucy — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:44:49 +0000

YES! I was searching furiously for a way to do this a few weeks ago for a project and ended up having to just search google for the icon. I wish I would have known about this earlier! :)