This preferences panel controls the icon data included when File Buddy creates icons.
Use the checkboxes next to each icon size to control which icon sizes and formats File Buddy includes when pasting icons and creating custom icons. File Buddy can create all supported sizes, but creating all sizes does little more than waste disk space. Finder can scale icons quite well, so a good rule of thumb when creating icons from images is to have File Buddy create data for one size that is the largest size you anticipate using when you view the item in Finder. Finder will scale that icon as needed when displaying it at other sizes. In many cases this can reduce the amount of disk space used by as much as 300K or more depending on the image and the size of the icon created.
For example, giving a folder the custom icon below in all sizes uses 556K of disk space, but one with only the 128-pixel version uses only 68K of disk space.
Click this button to open an icon family viewer with a sample of the icon sizes you’ve selected. Clicked repeatedly without changing which icon sizes are checked causes File Buddy to cycle through some some icons included with File Buddy. These samples were created to include an icon in every supported size.
If you check or uncheck any of the sizes between successive uses of the
Show Sample button, File Buddy will use the previous sample so you can compare the two sets using the same sample.
The icon samples are stored as .icns files in this folder:
File Buddy.app/Contents/Resources/SampleIcons
The code File Buddy uses to access these sample icon files makes no assumptions about how many there are or what their names are, so feel free to create your own and add them. Just be sure to create samples that contain all sizes. Here is a simple way to do that:
- Enable creation of all icon sizes in the panel of File Buddy’s Preferences window.
- Open a File Buddy Info window for any file.
- Click the item’s icon in the window to select it.
- Paste an image from the Clipboard onto the icon.
- Click the small menu disclosure button below and to the right of the icon and choose
- Give the icon a name and save in the location of your choice.
- Dismiss the window by clicking the Cancel.
