Icon2Image
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Overview
Icon2Image is a utility for:
- Creating image thumbnails of file, folder and disk icons in various image formats.
- Adding custom icons to image, movie or ICNS files.
- Making ICNS icons of image file contents or movie poster frames.
- Making ICNS icons of file, folder and disk icons.
- Making images from ICNS files.
- More!
This functionality is available as a contextual menu in the Finder. An accompanying system preference pane enables you to configure various options such as the background color or sizes of generated images.
How To Install Icon2Image
The software archive contains two files:
1) Icon2Image.plugin: This is the contextual menu. Put it in "/Library/Contextual Menu Items/"
2) Icon2Image.prefPane: This is the preference pane for configuring the contextual menu. Put it in "/Library/PreferencePanes"
Once installed you need to logout and log back in to load the contextual menu (or you can simply relaunch the Finder using "Force Quit" from the Apple menu.)
How To Activate and Use Icon2Image
The following quick 8 steps will guide you through activation and usage:
1) Control-click on anything in the Finder, and navigate the contextual menu to the "Icon2Image" section:
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Select "Icon2Image Preferences..." and the system preference pane will display.
2) The system preference pane first opens to the "Settings" tab where you can specify the size of the images generated from the Finder icons:
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3) Click the "Password" tab. If this is the first time you are running Icon2Image the program automatically activates itself for about 10 days.
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If the demo expired this is where you would enter your permanent (registered) password.
4) Once activated you can start making images from Finder icons. First select one or more Finder icons, as shown.
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5) Now Control-click on any icon in the selection to display the Finder's contextual menu, and select an image format from the "Icon2Image" submenu:
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Icon2Image will generate images from all icons in the selection, placing them in a folder named "Icon2Image" in your Documents folder of your Home folder.
6) You can go to the Icon2Image image folder by Control-clicking anywhere in the Finder and selecting "Go to Icon2Image folder..."
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7) The Icon2Image folder is now opened:
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8) Select your images and double click on one to preview them in Preview:
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That's all there is to it!
Modifying behavior via Preferences.
After you install Icon2Image you will find a preference pane icon for it located in the "Other" section of the System Preferences. You can either access the Icon2Image preference pane by clicking on this icon, or by using the "Icon2Image Preferences..." in the contextual menu itself:
The preference pane currently enables you to modify the behavior of the features displayed below. Changes made in the preference pane take effect immediately.
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Preferences:
Add as submenu
Icon2Image can display its menu as a submenu of the Finders contextual menu to save space in the menu.
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Include make icons
You have the option to not display menu items to make icons, leaving just the other menu items available.
Overwrite files by same name
If a file by the same name already exists this option enables you to prevent Icon2Image from overwriting it.
Include add custom icon
Option to show the menu items which add custom icons to graphics and movie files (using the movie poster frame.)
Image ICNS
If this option is selected, and the file is an ICNS file, the image is generated from the ICNS data in the file, rather than the file icon itself.
- Append icon size
If this option is selected, the current icon size will be appended to the name of the generated image files.
Background image color
For images that don't support transparent backgrounds you can specify a background image color, using the standard color picker, so that the images blend well with the background they may be placed upon. (The color chooser has a "dropper" tool to copy colors from other parts of the screen.) Click on the color well to open the picker. (Image formats that support transparency include TIFF, PNG and TGA)
Also note that Icon2Image displays the hexadecimal value of the chosen color next to the color well. You can use that to verify the chosen color matches a color you specify in HTML.
Compression (Image) Quality
For supported Quicktime Codecs (such as JPEG) you can specify compression (image) quality.
Image size.
Use the slider to specify the output image size. You can choose a size between 16 and 128 pixels on a side.
Add custom icon to file.
If you select this option Icon2Image will add a custom icon (derived from the graphic image) to the file.
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Put generated files into the same folder as the item.
As an alternative to putting generated files into a special folder, you can select this option to keep the generated files in the same folder as the item.
Choose image folder
Lets you specify where Icon2image will save files it creates.
Open image folder for me
Option to open the image folder in the Finder after a file is created and added to it.
Open image file for me
Lets you specify if Icon2image should open the file after it creates it. The file opens in the default application for files of that type.
System requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later