FAR from showing how clever I am (which was the original intention) this little piece of prose demonstrates the exact opposite. However, as this is a 'support' website I have decided to include it anyway.
A few months ago I read a Newbie Club article entitled Paint Your
Own Icons. Never having been much good at painting anything, I decided
to follow the instructions -and then innovate.
All went well and I ended up replacing the icon for my 'Fax' with a cute graphic of a dog. Unfortunately I don't recall where I obtained this graphic but ever since then I have been toying with the idea of making more icons -and have had visions of little smiling faces peeping at me from my desktop.
I thought I would make a few new icons yesterday afternoon - and
then write about it . How humiliating. For a start I couldn't remember
how I had reduced the 'doggie' icon to the correct size, and all
my attempts to turn photos into icons failed miserably. Perhaps
someone will be able to help when they have read this, but I am
beginning to suspect one can't reduce everything and anything, willy-nilly,
particularly photographs.
Of course I began with Tom Glander's icon painting instructions in one hand. They read like this... ...'We'll use Paint for our Icon redecorating project. You'll find it under the Accessories menu (Start, Programs, Accessories). Once it's open, you'll need to set the size to 32 by 32 pixels. That's the size of the icons on your desktop. 'To set the size, click 'Image' on the menu line, and select 'Attributes'. Set the width and height to 32, and click the 'pixels' radio button. Click OK, and you've now got a little 32 by 32 pixel square to work with. Too little? Just click View, Zoom, Large Size, or press the Ctrl and Page Down keys together. (Ctrl+Page Down). The space increases enough to work in. Now grab a tool and start drawing'....
And this is where I started doing my own thing - and several hours later I was still doing it. Whenever anyone tells me about the marvellous things one can do with Paint, and programs like Paint Shop Pro, I become quite beady because I can't draw anyway and to me they have always seemed incomprehensible. This explains why I intended to 'import' my pictures. Well I tried, and tried. First of all I opened a photograph in Picture It, and then I opened it in MGI PhotoSuite. When I tried to reduce it sufficiently it disintegrated - and there appeared to be no way I could save it in the correct format in any case. Nothing daunted I dug out my Microsoft Greetings CD, intending to pinch some graphics from there - and couldn't export them anywhere because of the weird file extensions which appear to go with that program.
So I decided to download a graphics viewer and duly went to their
website - but my browser wouldn't open the page.Then I clicked on
http://www.tucows.com and managed to start downloading ACDSee Classic
-slowly and painfully at something like 950 bytes per second. After
20 minutes (when the download was half through) my PC froze and
I was forced to reboot it. By this time every other living thing
in the house was fast asleep - but I started the download, again.
When it was finally completed I had the pleasure of exploring this excellent software but achieved nothing as it is a viewer, not a graphics editor. Hmmm. Eventually, in a very roundabout manner, and I couldn't possibly tell you how, I placed a line drawing of an angel fish, from the Greetings CD, in Paint! Furthermore I coloured it in, drew some bubbles, even signed it. Hurray!
But there was no way I could then reduce it to the required 32 pixel size. I still don't know why. I think the moral of this rambling tale is to simply follow Tom Glander's instructions, and forget about the innovative bit.
He says.... ...'Once you're satisfied with your drawing, save it. Put it in a folder named 'My Icons' that you create on your C Drive, Or on a Zip disk. Or wherever the heck it is you save your stuff. One tricky thing to observe.... ' When you go to save your file, give it the .ico file extension. You won't see that option listed in the file types drop down box, but no problem. Just give it the .ico extension and click Save.'...
Once you have created your new icons you need to install them. Right click on the icon you want to change and select Properties from the menu that appears. Then click the 'Change Icon' button (if there is one) and work your way through the dialogue box which appears. (Sometimes an icon cannot be changed so just accept this gracefully if the 'Change Icon' button is missing.) Click Browse to get to the icon you have just made. Apart from the time spent in Paint designing your icon, this process can be completed in seconds - and you will be delighted with the result.
I have to mention that I am still exceptionally pleased with the cute little dog icon I 'made' a couple of months ago - I only wish I could remember how I did it..... If you are reading this Tom .....perhaps you can help?
Copyright 2001 Sheldene Chant
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