Using Icon Gallery in Applications

OK, so you can change the icons on your desktop.  Cool.  But isn't there anything else you can do with all those icons?  You bet.

You can use Icon Gallery icons anyplace where you'd paste a PICT bitmap (i.e., a picture made up of paint dots).  Once you've got an Icon Gallery icon on the clipboard (see Copying an Icon from a Gallery disk, previous chapter), you can treat it just like any other bitmap image—just as if it were a square picture copied out of PhotoShop, SuperPaint, HyperCard, Studio/32, ColorIt!, PixelPaint, BrushStrokes or any of those other cool paint programs.  

And like with any picture copied from one of those paint programs, you can paste an Icon Gallery icon into pretty much any application that accepts pictures (i.e., PICTs).  These include desktop publishing programs like PageMaker and Quark Xpress to popular wordprocessors like Word, WordPerfect and MacWrite.  Those creating great presentations and multimedia aren't left out: use Icon Gallery icons in Director, Authorware, PowerPoint, and Persuasion.

Note: These are just a few examples, you can use the icons in literally hundreds of Mac applications and utilities.


Pasting an Icon into an Application Document

While there are substantial differences between applications—certainly Word and Director and Excel all work differently—all support pasting in of PICTs at the right time.

What do we mean by the right time? Well, some applications only allow you to paste the types of objects they're expecting and only allow pasting to occur in certain modes.  For example, Xpress users know that there's a tool for manipulating the location of objects and another for the content.  You can only paste when the content tool is active.

It's up to you and the makers of your application to determine when you can paste a picture, but whenever the conditions are right, go ahead and paste an icon.

Note: You'll need to make sure the icon's on the clipboard before pasting.  See Copying an Icon from a Gallery disk, previous chapter.


Resizing an Icon

If your application permits you to resize pictures, you can resize Icon Gallery icons.  But remember one very important fact.  Icons are bitmaps.  There are only 32 dots by 32 dots.  If you choose to enlarge an icon substantially, there will still be only 32 dots by 32 dots to work with (most applications will give you big, square fatbits-like dots).


Editing an Icon

Icon Gallery doesn't contain an icon editor, but you can tinker with the icon's pixels in just about any paint program.  Paste in the icon and edit away!