How to...

Create an Apple Macintosh icon

Icons targeting Mac OS X should be designed in several sizes and color depths, just like icons for Windows. This is to ensure that they look good on your Mac whether displayed in small or large sizes. The default extension for the Apple Icon Image Format is ICNS. These files may only contain pages which fall into one of the following categories:

     SizeColor depth
 1024x102432-bit
 512x51232-bit
 256x25632-bit
 128x12832-bit
 48x4832-bit
a48x48256 colors
a48x4816 colors
a48x48Black and white
 32x3232-bit
b32x32256 colors
b32x3216 colors
b32x32Black and white
 16x1632-bit
c16x16256 colors
c16x1616 colors
c16x16Black and white
d16x12256 colors
d16x1216 colors
d16x12Black and white

Converting an existing image to a Macintosh icon

  1. Open your existing image file.
  2. Should it have multiple pages, select the page you want to create the new icon from.
  3. Choose the menu item Icon|Create Mac icon from image and put a check in the boxes corresponding to the formats you want to create.

You should then edit the individual pages to ensure that your icon will look good when displayed resized.

Testing your icon

See this article.