My current ad hoc work flow for toolbar icons which are geometric in
nature.
• Use "Inkscape".
• Use a small canvas size of 28 points wide x 22 points high.
• Try to make sure the ink is generally constrained with the
individual point boundaries.
• Save the "Inkscape" file as a pdf.
• Open the pdf in "MakeThumbnail" and create an icns file.
• Use the icns file for the toolbar image.
Short of getting a degree in graphic design or spending money on
software or hiring a graphic artist, what can I do that will make
better looking toolbar icons?
The pdf art work looks good. The toolbar icons don't look so good, the
edges are a little fuzzy. The toolbar icons at regular size are
slightly larger than the original pdf.
With an NSButton the pdf file works great and looks great when scaling
set to none. When the pdf file is used as the image for the toolbar
item, it gets asymmetrically stretched and looks horrible. Thus the
reason for converting the pdf to an icns file.
The "MakeThumbnail" application actually makes 9 images from very
large to small. The large ones are obviously an overkill for the
toolbar.
The Apple Human Interface Guidelines has this to say "Although toolbar
icons should conserve screen real estate (32 x 32 pixels is the
recommended size), they should be inviting and easy to identify." This
is nice to know but doesn't provide much help.
--Richard
_______________________________________________
Cocoa-dev mailing list ([email protected])
Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list.
Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
This email sent to [email protected]
