Converting Mac Icons into Windows Format

There is an opinion that there is much more quality 32-bit icons for MAC OS than for Windows in the Internet. But Mac icons can be easily converted into the *.ico format and used for Windows. The detailed instructions on how to do this are below.

Downloading and extracting from the archive

Mac icons in the Internet are usually archived. Archives can be of two types: with the *.sit extension and with the double extension *.sit.hqx. A very rare version is *.sit.sitx, they should be processed in the same way as *.sit.hqx. To extract files from the archive you will need an archiver. Note that you need an archiver, which understands the macintosh archives and runs under Windows. The most popular such archiver is Stuffit. It can be found here: www.stuffit.com. Standard Edition 8.0 or newer is recommended. The file for downloading is rather large (8 Mb). Stuffit consists of the packer and extractor. The extractor can be used for free for unlimited time.

"Stuffit standard" is quite a capricious so make sure to do everything exactly how it is described below.

1. Launch Stuffit Expander.
2. Drug and drop your *.sit archive into Stuffit. Otherwise, use the File-Open menu item to open the archive.
3. Now, find and select only the icons themselves in the archive, otherwise the program can abort when packing. Select all necessary items by holding "Shift" or "Ctrl" Then, in the main menu select Expand-Extract.
4. In the “Extract Dialog” window that will appear, press Browse and choose where the files will be extracted. Press OK. If you have made everything correctly, you will see the unpacked files in the selected folder.
5. If the extraction process completed successfully, close Stuffit. The extraction is completed but there are things to be done.

Converting into Windows format

Now you will need one of the following programs: IconLover, ArtIcons Pro or IconXP. They can quickly read Macintosh® icons and convert them into Windows® icons in seconds.

You can work with .icns and .rsrc icons the same way you work with pictures of other formats: open them using the menu, drag and drop them into the program window, add to icon libraries.

Some mac icons contains only 128x128 images. In this case, you will have to do 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 subicons. You can do it using ArtIcons, IconLover or IconXP and the Tools – New Image Format menu item.

Then, just delete unnecessary formats (for example, monochrome) from the icons and you can save them as .ico files!

Extracting icons from *.sit.hqx. archives

To solve this task, you will need one more program – TurboZIP (5.0 or newer).

Run it. Then in the program toolbar press “Open” and select *.hqx in the “file types” box. In the left window you will see the *.sit.hqx file and in the right window – simply *.sit. Now just drag them using the mouse into any folder (for example, the desktop). Then, process the *.sit file as described earlier. The only disadvantage of the program is that it is not very stable.

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