Roll your own Mail.app stamp icon
Monday, July 24th, 2006
If you have Photoshop and a bit of patience, it is easy to roll your own stamp icon for Mail.app.
Thanks to John Godfrey, you can download an icon template in PSD format 
from his web site.
The zip file contains instructions on how to insert your desired image into the template. It helps if you rotate it about 11.2 degrees counter-clockwise and resize it to a width of about 85-90 pixels.
When the image is ready, you can use a freeware utility like img2icns to convert it into an icon file.
Img2icns has just been updated. The new version (0.3) is a universal binary, handles .tiff files better and is smarter about saving the finished product.
Obviously, you can have an enormous amount of fun playing around with this:
Here, after ten minutes work, are a Cult of Mac icon, a productivity-enhancing Merlin Mann talisman, a Daring Fireball logo and a Leopard stamp, just itching for 10.5 to be released.
The template itself has a small graphical bug in it. The space between the lines in the postmark is not fully transparent. It’s not fatal, but I can’t fix it without wrecking the rest of the image (Photoshop genius that I am). Perhaps you can.
Once your .icns file is ready, you can follow the instructions in an earlier Hawk Wings post to replace Mail.app’s default icon.
So get to it. Post me your coolest work and win the coveted “Hawk Wings Icon of the Week” award.
Tags: Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips, Dock, icon, mail.app, make your own, stamp icons