Icon Composer is a tool for developers who want to reduce the time they spend creating high quality icons from existing images for Apple devices. It works for Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch.
Unlike other apps that just resize an image, Icon Composer uniquely imports single or multiple files, provides basic editing features, and composites the resulting images into one canvas. It then resizes the composite to whatever is required by the target OS. Acceptable file formats include JPEG, PNG, TIFF and PDF, along with any other image format recognised by Apple.
Editing facilities include:
- Cropping
- Deleting rectangles
- Resizing
- Compositing images within the canvas
- Adjusting transparency
- Outputs a folder of Xcode-ready icons
Who is this for?
Icon Composer is for all developers of apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch.
Introduction
Icon Composer is a Mac OS application that edits existing images, makes a composite, and resizes according to Apple HI guidelines, saving the files ready to insert them into your Xcode project.
How to enter images
Adding images is achieved by dragging and dropping recognised image files (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF etc…) onto the image view marked “Drop image files here”. Pretty self-explanatory really! You can add files one by one or all together.
Arranging images
Each file will be assigned a reference number in the image table – click on it and you’ll see your image in the thumbnail and the image view. The thumbnail always represents your original unedited image. If you want to remove an image from the table, just select it and press the delete key. You can re-order the images by dragging and dropping them within the table. This is important because when you create your composite design, the images at the top of the table appear at the rear and those at the bottom overlay at the front
Editing images
Images can be shrunk or expanded (respecting the aspect ratio) using the size slider, or pinching in or out on a trackpad. They can be moved within the canvas bounds by clicking and dragging. Basic editing functionality includes cutting and cropping, and if you make a mistake you can reset back to the original. Finally, the transparency of an image can be changed with the alpha slider. Each image may be edited separately, when that image is selected from the image table.
Compositing images
Selecting the View composite image checkbox will overlay all your images from the top of the table to the bottom, in that order.
Naming images
Icon Composer chooses the filename of one of your images as an initial icon root name. If it chose badly, change it!
Creating Icons
First select the operating system you are targeting, then click on the Create Icons button at the bottom of the window. A folder will be created wherever you choose containing the icons you will need. Be careful though… the icons will reflect the image currently being viewed. If you want to combine all your images, make sure you select the View composite image checkbox first.
Need support?
Just write a comment to my blog entry entitled Icon Composer support. I’ll be notified, and I promise to answer you!
