Windows Icons

Can anybody tell me if there is a way for windows to coppy icons so you can use them as your own. My friend has no problem doing it on his Mac. Thats really starting to make me want to trash my windows system and opt for OS X.

That's really easy. I'm guessing that you're talking about saving icons to use on your desktop, right? Well, you can either download sets of them from about a thousand different sites or create them in Photoshop.

If you just want to create icons, you have to remember that they are different from standard images. They are have standard sizes (usually quite small): 16x16, 32x32, 48x48... and that one single icon is composed of several images, each of them with a different size and number of colors (mono, 16 colors, 256 colors, 16.8M, ect.) I'm beta testing Vista now, and it's a whole different ball of wax with those files, but that's a story for another time..

The most important property of an icon is the ability to include transparent areas. This allows seeing the screen background behind the icon within its square image.

The extension for a Windows icon file is "ICO", of which only one icon can be saved in an icon file. If you want to group several icons in a file you must create a library. Most people simply save pictures that they want to use as .ICO (taking a standard .gif image called FOLDER.gif and saving it as (for example) FOLDER.ICO). That really doesn't look right or work well.

You can save preexisting ICO files in XP, which will work right and look nice by simply saving them to disk and remembering to save them as .ICO files.

Lastly, please halt any thinking of switching to OSX, or any Mac product - the Mac has been systematically debunked again and again. Even Windows XP, as buggy and unreliable as it is, performs better than OS X. If you want performance and stability, go with Linux. But that's really neither here nor there and I'm getting off topic.

[edit on 6/6/06 by Bripe Klmun]

I don't have a link handy, but Icon Pilot is one of the programs I have used to create and also extract Icons. You can Google search for it.

They actually don't make Icon Pilot anymore (though I am sure it's available somewhere), but it has been replaced by the firm that makes it, AHA-SOFTWARE and those replacements can be found here.

Good call, Mech.

I have made several of my on icons but just say to copy and save the ATS icon so you can use it on your desktop quck launch is impossible for windows but easy on OS X. Sometimes the ATS icon will stay on my desktop a few days and then it dissapears. So I find myself using a less atrractive one.