Calle's Custom Icons - Questions & Answers

I recieve a lot of mail with compliments, but also with questions and requests.
So I listed some of the most frequent questions and answers right here.

How am I supposed to do to be able to use your icons?

First of all: is your computer a PC or a Mac?
If it's a PC, forget the instructions here, and go further down on this page.
But if you want to exchange an icon on your Apple Macintosh computer - let's say you want a beautiful variety of folders instead of the boring look-alikes you get as standard - you do it this way:

Click once on the icon you want to use - then it goes dark.

Go to the top menu, press "File" and go to "Show Info", which opens an info window about that folder.

Click once on the icon at the top of the info window - then it will get a black frame.

Go to the top menu again - "Copy".

Close the Info window.

Now you have copied the icon.

Then you click once on the folder or document you want to decorate with a nice icon. Make sure it is marked - it should be darker than before.

Again, go to the top menu, press "File" and go to "Show Info".

Click once on the icon you want to replace, at the top of the info window.

When it has a frame, go to the top menu again - "Paste".

Close the Info window.

Now you have pasted the icon you want, and you are ready to do it again on other folders and documents.

What programs do you use?

When I started drawing icons I worked in Photoshop only, but I found that the icons I made in Photoshop were incomplete. To make real icons, you need to fix all the resources in them. They have to have good images in full 256 colours, in 16 colours, black and white, 32x32 pixels as well as 16x16 pixels - and they all have to have a functioning mask. When I started using ResEdit, that really revolutionized my icon making, since this program is made for editing resources.
So now I use a combination of Photoshop and ResEdit, and often ResEdit alone. Many of the best icon makers use ResEdit, and only ResEdit. It's the best. And in combination with Photoshop, it's a killer!
I will either make the icons directly in a ResEdit file, which requires some kind of program to extract the icons from the ResEdit file, such as Icon Archiver - or I use a Icon Collector file.
I collect icons in a very nice program called Icon Collector, and if I want to edit an icon, or create a new one, I can drag the I.C. file to the ResEdit Application icon, and then I just edit the I.C. file through ResEdit. This is a very comfortable way of working, since I do not have to extract the icon - it's already there, in the I.C. file.
But I have to emphasize how very important it is to always work with copies of files though, since it only requires very little to corrupt a file when you work with it through ResEdit.

How can I make my own icons?

I haven't had the time to make an Icon Making School on this site, but there are others who has done that. Check my Icon Links page.

But I will help you just a little bit:
Two of the programs you may need I keep for download here -
ResEdit and Icon Collector.

Click on the Icon to download ResEdit.

Click on the Icon to download Icon Collector.

How many icons have you made altogether?
On this site I have 2333 icons available for download, but of course I have made many more than that. I make new icons all the time, and often for my own use only.
Besides that, I have made a lot of icons and buttons for a software company here in Sweden, and I have also made hundreds of system replacement icons for my Kaleidoscope schemes, so altogether I guess I have made more than 2800 icons!

Why do your icons function in Macintosh only, and not Windows?
To make icons that work in Windows, I'd have to have a PC (help!) and a good conversion program. And I have neither one of them.
There are good conversion programs for Windows (see the next question) you can use.

Can I convert your icons to Windows format, so I can use them in my PC?
Yes, you can. To my knowledge, there are at least two different softwares that can do this. There is MacIco, at the site with the same name; MacIco, and there is a freeware Windows Icon Library at LionTech. Try them both and see which one works the best for you.

Why don't you keep icons for downloading in both Macintosh and Windows format. like so many other iconists do?
First of all - I haven't had the time to put all that work into converting them. I prefer to utilize my free time with my children, or maybe create some new original work.
But if you would actually pay me for the work, I might feel a stronger motivation to go ahead with the work of converting them. :-)

How do you make your Kaleidoscope schemes?
I use a combination of Designer's Studio, a wonderful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for Kaleidoscope schemes, and the good old resource editor ResEdit. So far I have had to use ResEdit, not only because it is a favourite of mine, but also because Designer's Studio 1.1 couldn't handle all the special stuff I wanted. But now there has come a new version, DS 1.5, which just might be able to fix the whole thing. Don't hesitate to try it out! It's fun!