How do I create a favicon in Photoshop?

October 28, 2004 9:47 PM

How do I create a bookmark icon for my website using Windows XP and Photoshop 7? I can't find a way to save as an .ico file. Googling leads to a lot of older Photoshop version stuff.
posted by swank6 to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Try a plug-in.
posted by kindall at 9:49 PM on October 28, 2004

FavIcon from Pics. It doesn't get any more convenient.
posted by muckster at 9:50 PM on October 28, 2004

Photoshop doesn't have the native ability to save icon files.

For $600, how friggin' lame is that?

Thank you, kindall, for that link!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:03 PM on October 28, 2004

Ah, perfect. Thanks.
posted by swank6 at 10:11 PM on October 28, 2004

A .ico file is just a very small (16x16 or 32x32, for instance) renamed .bmp file.

I made my favicon.ico file in PSP by just resizing a larger picture down to 16x16 and reducing it to 256 colors, then saving it as a .bmp and renaming it to .ico.
posted by Edge100x at 10:26 PM on October 28, 2004

Save as a 16x16 pixel Windows BMP file at 8 bit depth. Rename to favicon.ico and place in your web server's docroot.

Or better yet, don't, and do your part to stamp out the proliferation of favicons.
posted by majick at 10:38 PM on October 28, 2004

majick - is there something bad about them that I'm not aware of?
posted by swank6 at 10:55 PM on October 28, 2004

Real .ico files have the ability to hold different size and color depth images in the same file. There are icon editors for that.
posted by sageleaf at 12:13 AM on October 29, 2004

Two problems with favicons: For one, it requires .ico files, which are a PITA to create on every platform as evidenced by this question, and are only used on Windows. Why didn't MS just make them gif's?

The other problem is that if you don't have one, you get tons of 404 errors in your logs from browsers just blindly requesting it.
posted by smackfu at 6:39 AM on October 29, 2004

are only used on Windows

And Chimera, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and Safari on a Mac.
posted by tenseone at 6:56 AM on October 29, 2004

( If there are, by chance, any Mac users reading this thread who have faced difficulty in concocting a favicon, we have authored a rather simple set of instructions in doing so.

All apologies for the so-called 'self link', we are only attempting to be useful for something other that piddledy-pot. )
posted by tenseone at 8:02 AM on October 29, 2004

And Chimera, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and Safari on a Mac.

I meant .ico files were only used/needed on windows, prior to being used for favicon.ico. Mac icons certainly aren't in that format. But now that it's the standard, everyone using the Internet has to support it.
posted by smackfu at 3:46 PM on October 29, 2004