Icon Png Mac Appdocument Icon

This tutorial can be used to export any Mac appdocument icon as a transparent PNG.

I myself often get asked about extracting high-quality Mac icons for use in blog posts, on websites and elsewhere.

Granted, its easy to navigate to your Applications folder and screenshot a desired icon in the Finders CoverFlow or Icon view.

On the downside, doing so removes icon transparency and fails to produce a pixel-perfect replica of the original icon.

Icon Png How To To Extract

This tutorial will teach you how to to extract icons from Mac apps in their original size as transparent PNG files.

Before we get to it, let me point out quickly that Apples Human Interface Guidelines for OS X development clearly mandate that developers include specific icon sizes in their app bundles.

In addition to the full-size 1,024-by-1,024 icon, developers must provide several smaller sizes that the operating system uses to enlarge and shrink the icon properly in various Finder views, minimizing artifacts.

Specifically, the required icon sizes are as follows: 1616, 3232, 6464, 128128, 256256, 512512 and 1,0241,024 pixels.

In addition, each may be provided in 72 and 144 pixels-per-inch flavors for use on non-Retina and Retina screens.

How to extract and save high resolution icons from Mac apps Step 1: Navigate to the Applications folder in Finder, either manually or by hitting the Shift--A combo on your keyboard.

Locate a desired app in this case Mission Control and click once to highlight it.

Of course, you could just as easily highlight any other app or document icon anywhere on your Mac.

Step 2: Press I on your keyboard to bring up the item information window in Finder.

Alternatively, right-click the application and select Get Info.

Now click once on the apps icon in the top left corner of the Info panel to highlight it.

Next, press C on the keyboard this will copy the icons graphics to the system clipboard.

If its not in the Dock, use the Spotlight icon in the upper right corner of the Macs menubar and type Preview to locate the app (tip: its inside the Applications folder by default).

Step 4: With Preview launched and active, press N to create a new document from clipboard.

Alternatively, choose New from Clipboard option from Previews File menu.

In the lefthand column, Preview provides your icons graphics in multiple sizes.

Step 6: The first icon at the top is the full-resolution variant you need.

Step 7: The file sheet will appear offering to save the chosen icon size in several graphics formats such as JPEG, JPEG-2000, OpenEXR, PDF, PNG, TIFF and ICNS, the latter being the Macs default app icon bundle format.

Choose PNG. Name your file, hit the Save button and thats it You now have a beautiful pixel-by-pixel version of the original icon, saved in the lossless PNG format and with transparency preserved.

From there, upload it to your blog and use it in posts, for your video compositions, in document layouts, presentations and what not.

Full-size icon PNGs tend to be fairly large for comfortable use on the web so it may be a good idea to convert them to JPG assuming you dont care about transparency and are not concerned about light compression artifacts barely visible to the naked eye.

Movie Icon Png For Mac