[Larry_Plachno]

Back in OS 9.2.2 there was a program known as Fast Find. In addition to finding folders on your Mac, it allowed you to create custom icons by changing the color of the little squares that make up the icon.

Does anyone know whether there is a program like this in OS X that allows you make custom folder icons?

Thanks

Larry

[bastion]

Larry_Plachno, on 30 May 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Back in OS 9.2.2 there was a program known as Fast Find. In addition to finding folders on your Mac, it allowed you to create custom icons by changing the color of the little squares that make up the icon.

Does anyone know whether there is a program like this in OS X that allows you make custom folder icons?

Not familiar with the application and can't find anything useful quickly on Google. You can attach a custom icon to any file or folder you like through the Get Info window. You probably already know that, but I mention it just in case. Just get the image you want on the clipboard, click the icon in the Get Info window, and invoke the Paste command.

Assuming what you're really looking for is a way to create the actual picture... I wouldn't be surprised if the primary reason that program no longer exists is that icons have become larger and more complex to manipulate in the OS X era and if that app was really just recoloring the icon as you seem to describe the author may not have invested the time in figuring out how to update it. But, you can probably do it yourself fairly easily with Graphic Converter or another image editor. I'm not on a machine right now to test, so the results may be awful but it's worth a try.

Get Info on your folder, click the icon, and invoke the Copy command.
In your image editor, create a new document from the contents of the clipboard. Hopefully you'll have gotten all resolutions or at least the highest one.
Downsample the image to grey. This command is probably in every image editor and should be relatively easy to find. You may end up converting the whole document to a grey colorspace; you'll want to convert it back to RGB afterwards. The image data should remain grey, though.
Now find a command in your image editor to colorize the picture, and experiment to find a color that works.

Now copy the whole image and paste it back onto the Get Info icon.

Not as convenient as a program that does it in one shot, but you should only have to do any specific color once.

[Larry_Plachno]

bastion, on 30 May 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

Larry_Plachno, on 30 May 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Back in OS 9.2.2 there was a program known as Fast Find. In addition to finding folders on your Mac, it allowed you to create custom icons by changing the color of the little squares that make up the icon.

Does anyone know whether there is a program like this in OS X that allows you make custom folder icons?

Not familiar with the application and can't find anything useful quickly on Google. You can attach a custom icon to any file or folder you like through the Get Info window. You probably already know that, but I mention it just in case. Just get the image you want on the clipboard, click the icon in the Get Info window, and invoke the Paste command.

Assuming what you're really looking for is a way to create the actual picture... I wouldn't be surprised if the primary reason that program no longer exists is that icons have become larger and more complex to manipulate in the OS X era and if that app was really just recoloring the icon as you seem to describe the author may not have invested the time in figuring out how to update it. But, you can probably do it yourself fairly easily with Graphic Converter or another image editor. I'm not on a machine right now to test, so the results may be awful but it's worth a try.

Get Info on your folder, click the icon, and invoke the Copy command.
In your image editor, create a new document from the contents of the clipboard. Hopefully you'll have gotten all resolutions or at least the highest one.
Downsample the image to grey. This command is probably in every image editor and should be relatively easy to find. You may end up converting the whole document to a grey colorspace; you'll want to convert it back to RGB afterwards. The image data should remain grey, though.
Now find a command in your image editor to colorize the picture, and experiment to find a color that works.

Now copy the whole image and paste it back onto the Get Info icon.

Not as convenient as a program that does it in one shot, but you should only have to do any specific color once.

Thanks for your comments. The copy and paste works OK with both OS 9.2.2 and OS X. In addition, I have already created folder icons by using the images from photo files. But I liked what Fast Find did in working with each of the individual squares in an icon. Frankly, it was time consuming but could be fun.

Larry

[bastion]

Larry_Plachno, on 30 May 2012 - 05:44 PM, said:

bastion, on 30 May 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

Larry_Plachno, on 30 May 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Back in OS 9.2.2 there was a program known as Fast Find. In addition to finding folders on your Mac, it allowed you to create custom icons by changing the color of the little squares that make up the icon.

Does anyone know whether there is a program like this in OS X that allows you make custom folder icons?

Not familiar with the application and can't find anything useful quickly on Google. You can attach a custom icon to any file or folder you like through the Get Info window. You probably already know that, but I mention it just in case. Just get the image you want on the clipboard, click the icon in the Get Info window, and invoke the Paste command.

Assuming what you're really looking for is a way to create the actual picture... I wouldn't be surprised if the primary reason that program no longer exists is that icons have become larger and more complex to manipulate in the OS X era and if that app was really just recoloring the icon as you seem to describe the author may not have invested the time in figuring out how to update it. But, you can probably do it yourself fairly easily with Graphic Converter or another image editor. I'm not on a machine right now to test, so the results may be awful but it's worth a try.

Get Info on your folder, click the icon, and invoke the Copy command.
In your image editor, create a new document from the contents of the clipboard. Hopefully you'll have gotten all resolutions or at least the highest one.
Downsample the image to grey. This command is probably in every image editor and should be relatively easy to find. You may end up converting the whole document to a grey colorspace; you'll want to convert it back to RGB afterwards. The image data should remain grey, though.
Now find a command in your image editor to colorize the picture, and experiment to find a color that works.

Now copy the whole image and paste it back onto the Get Info icon.

Not as convenient as a program that does it in one shot, but you should only have to do any specific color once.

Thanks for your comments. The copy and paste works OK with both OS 9.2.2 and OS X. In addition, I have already created folder icons by using the images from photo files. But I liked what Fast Find did in working with each of the individual squares in an icon. Frankly, it was time consuming but could be fun.

Larry

Can you explain what you mean by "each of the individual squares?" I thought in the first post you were referring to pixels, but it sounds like that's not the case.

[Larry_Plachno]

bastion, on 30 May 2012 - 07:03 PM, said:

Larry_Plachno, on 30 May 2012 - 05:44 PM, said:

bastion, on 30 May 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

Larry_Plachno, on 30 May 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Back in OS 9.2.2 there was a program known as Fast Find. In addition to finding folders on your Mac, it allowed you to create custom icons by changing the color of the little squares that make up the icon.

Does anyone know whether there is a program like this in OS X that allows you make custom folder icons?

Not familiar with the application and can't find anything useful quickly on Google. You can attach a custom icon to any file or folder you like through the Get Info window. You probably already know that, but I mention it just in case. Just get the image you want on the clipboard, click the icon in the Get Info window, and invoke the Paste command.

Assuming what you're really looking for is a way to create the actual picture... I wouldn't be surprised if the primary reason that program no longer exists is that icons have become larger and more complex to manipulate in the OS X era and if that app was really just recoloring the icon as you seem to describe the author may not have invested the time in figuring out how to update it. But, you can probably do it yourself fairly easily with Graphic Converter or another image editor. I'm not on a machine right now to test, so the results may be awful but it's worth a try.

Get Info on your folder, click the icon, and invoke the Copy command.
In your image editor, create a new document from the contents of the clipboard. Hopefully you'll have gotten all resolutions or at least the highest one.
Downsample the image to grey. This command is probably in every image editor and should be relatively easy to find. You may end up converting the whole document to a grey colorspace; you'll want to convert it back to RGB afterwards. The image data should remain grey, though.
Now find a command in your image editor to colorize the picture, and experiment to find a color that works.

Now copy the whole image and paste it back onto the Get Info icon.

Not as convenient as a program that does it in one shot, but you should only have to do any specific color once.

Thanks for your comments. The copy and paste works OK with both OS 9.2.2 and OS X. In addition, I have already created folder icons by using the images from photo files. But I liked what Fast Find did in working with each of the individual squares in an icon. Frankly, it was time consuming but could be fun.

Larry

Can you explain what you mean by "each of the individual squares?" I thought in the first post you were referring to pixels, but it sounds like that's not the case.

In Fast Find, each icon was presented as a matrix of squares. To customize the icon, you simple changed each square to the desired color. It was somewhat time consuming but I was able to make some really nice icons. I did find a program called Iconographer that does something similar in OS X but the matrix is much larger with a correspondingly larger number of squares. It is almost overwhelming.

Larry

[bastion]

Larry_Plachno, on 03 June 2012 - 01:05 PM, said:

bastion, on 30 May 2012 - 07:03 PM, said:

Can you explain what you mean by "each of the individual squares?" I thought in the first post you were referring to pixels, but it sounds like that's not the case.

In Fast Find, each icon was presented as a matrix of squares. To customize the icon, you simple changed each square to the desired color. It was somewhat time consuming but I was able to make some really nice icons. I did find a program called Iconographer that does something similar in OS X but the matrix is much larger with a correspondingly larger number of squares. It is almost overwhelming.

Ah. You did mean pixels. Any image editing program will do for your needs, and the view you're remembering is just like you've zoomed in quite a bit.

Here's the thing. Prior to OS X, icons were 32 pixels on a side. When OS X came out, the standard icon size increased to 128 pixels. A couple of OS versions ago Apple increased the maximum icon size to 512 pixels, but Iconographer hasn't been updated since before then, IIRC. (So if you work it out, it's 256 times as many pixels as it used to be assuming you do full-rez.)