Easily create 128x128 PNGs from icons

May 23, '06 07:30:05AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

I was attempting to make some new icons recently, and I wanted to start with an existing one, but modify it in a graphics program. I thought there was a way to copy the icon into the clipboard in previous versions of OS X, but each time I tried (Get Info, select icon, copy), I would only get a small version of the icon (about 32x32), and without transparency. But I wanted the larger version and with the transparency. I do realize there are some shareware utilities out there for this, but this should be do-able by the system itself. Turns out, it is.

So, here's the tip I found -- perhaps this has been reported before, but I couldn't find it.

Drag the item which has the icon you want to use into the Dock, then activate OS X's window capture screenshot feature -- press Shift-Command-4, then press the Space Bar. Now position the camera icon over the icon in your Dock and click. On your desktop will be a PNG file of the full-sized icon (128x128), with its transparency and nothing else. Easy!

[robg adds: I didn't realize the camera tool would see each Dock icon as a separate window; that's a pretty useful tip right there. When I tested this, though, I found that I only got good results when the icons in the Dock were as large as possible. Compare the two shots (of Butler's icon) seen at right. The leftmost one was taken with my Dock at its usual "smallish" setting. The one on the right was taken after removing all excess icons from the Dock, to make the Dock icons as large as possible. Although both captures are 128x128 (I shrunk them for display here), it seems OS X simply zooms the smaller capture up to the 128x128 size.]

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