how do i make desktop shortcuts on a mac

A second dialog will appear with options for print or online. A dialog box will appear.Ĭhoose the top option - “My image is on a transparent background” - and click Next. From the Help menu in Photoshop, choose Export Transparent Image. Your layers will now be combined into one image. Either way, save your finished icon as a Photoshop document and then choose Merge Visible from the layers palette. You can either create one easily in Photoshop or let Pic2Icon, a utility we’ll use later, do it for you. Notice that I left a bit of space for a drop shadow. Here’s the icon roughed out in Photoshop: Now, although there is a bit more flexibility in Apple’s user interface guidelines, I still find myself – along with many other developers – using round icons for every icon I create. In olden times (OS 8 & 9), Apple told developers to create application icons using a diamond shape. As you can see in the picture below, we start with the circle typical of many application icons today.

Also ensure that you are working in RGB mode rather than CMYK mode as CMYK mode is for print while RGB is for screens like computer monitors.įor the purposes of this tutorial, we are going to make an icon for a pretend application called SuperDuperMegaFind. I usually work at the largest icon size – 128 pixels – and use 72 DPI as my resolution. Whichever one you use, start with a new document using the same number of pixels across as down (i.e., make it square). You can find applications ranging from the free (and excellent) open-source application Gimp to the old standby Photoshop. Since our medium is the computer screen, we first need an application suited for painting pixels onto our digital canvas. At the end of this tutorial, you will have a beautiful* icon with a transparent background suitable for a web page or application. This tutorial will not necessarily be the way to do it, but it is one way (my way, actually). This article will be a “rubber-meets-the-road” tutorial on the steps necessary to transform your ideas into reality.

There are some steps involved in getting your icons from your mind to the web page or the application. The end result, of course, is seen here - on Macinstruct - in the icons scattered throughout the website.īut what about the development stage? Unfortunately, icons don’t just spring to life after being sketched out. In that article, you were shown the beginning stages of icon design – how the meaning of an idea is distilled down to a few carefully placed pixels.

AirPort Apple Apps Backups Developer Education Email Hardware Internet iPad iPhone Mac Music Network Photos Security TV Weekend WonkĪ few weeks ago, Matt Cone showed us how Macinstruct’s beautiful icons, courtesy of the talented Gary Gehiere, came to be.

How do i make desktop shortcuts on a mac