Gort's Icons
Mac OS X User Pictures
Big thanks to David Schultz for his article on Applelust.com about user pictures.
I've converted a lot of Gort's Icons Volume 4 and 5 to Mac OS X User Pictures (These are the pictures shown in the login panel next to the user names in Mac OS X). They're smaller than the ones that Apple provides (32x32 vs. 60x56), but they make up for it with...um...flavor. I've also included the Photoshop action I made that makes it easy (mostly for icon-makers that use PhotoShop to create their 32-bit icons) to convert icons to user pictures. (Download User Picts here)
Move the folder "Gort's Icons (User Pictures)" into Library/User Pictures/. Start System Preferences and go to the Users section. Select a user, click Edit, scroll through the pictures until you see the new pictures, select one, save, Log Out, and check out the rockin' new representations.
My user pictures were woefully un-customized, so as a quick fix, I started converting my icons into the user picture format...it was kind of slow going, until I used Photoshop's action feature, and recorded the repetitive steps.
Works like this (in my situation, at least):
When I'm done with an icon, I've got all the versions saved in a layer.
For a user picture, I select the 32x32 32-bit version, and run the Mac OS X User Picture Maker Photoshop action. It:
- copies the selection
- makes a new 60x56 graphic
- pastes your selection into it
- pastes it again, making a copy of it
- cranks the Lightness all the way up, turning the copy white
- turns the background black
- merges the white copy and the black background
- copies the merged layer
- pastes it into a new alpha channel
- prompts you for a name and location for your new user picture!
- Saving the .tif as Mac with LZW compression worked fine for me.
- In Photoshop, have your color palette (in the toolbar) set to the default black and white. If the back is a different color, you're likely to get a halo of that color around your picture...of course, if you want it that way, that's fine too...:)
- Quit and restart System Preferences to get it to load any new or changed user pictures.
- If you run the action, and Photoshop says "The command "Copy" is not currently available", it's because you don't have anything selected in your current picture. Select something and try again.
- For those that care, there's one of my new Volume 5 OS Xified icons in there...:)
These pictures are for personal use only. If you have a commercial application in mind, please contact me.
Forrest Walter
