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Icons are one of the major reasons why a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is much more pleasant to use them text command lines for controlling a computer. Icons are the little pictures that the Mac OS Finder uses to identify and manipulate files stored on media volumes like your hard drive. There are standard icon conventions for different types of files--applications, folders, documents, clippings, etc., but you are not limited to living with generic icons.

Most software developers, for instance, use custom icons for their application files, and for documents created by their programs. You can also easily customize the look of icons. This can be done at the programming level using Apple's ResEdit resource editor utility, but that's not recommended unless you really know what your doing. Happily, you can customize icons much more simply using the Finder.

For example, I used to run multiple copies of the Eudora Light e-mail program to support several e-mail accounts. Having a bunch of identical-looking Eudora application icons in the Application Switcher was confusing, so I gave each copy of Eudora Light different, distinctive icon.

You can make your own custom icons using a bitmap graphics program such as the painting module of AppleWorks, PhotoShop, or the excellent shareware application Graphics Converter. Mac OS file icons are just little PICT graphics that are 32 pixels square. You can create icons from scratch, or edit an existing icon or graphic.

To copy an icon for editing or to apply to another file, single click on the icon you want a copy and choose Get Info from the File Menu. A Get Info dialog box will open, and you will see the icon represented in the upper left-hand corner. Click on the icon to highlight it, and choose Copy from the File Menu (or Command + C), which will copy the icon to the Finder Clipboard.

Now you can paste the copied icon into a graphics program for editing, or onto another file to change its icon appearance. To do the latter, click on the destination icon and select Get Info as you did before. When the Get Info dialog opens, click on the icon picture in the upper left-hand box to highlight it, and then choose Paste from the File Menu (or Command + P). The icon from the clipboard will be pasted over the original icon and will appear on the desktop when you close the Get Info dialog box. You can copy and paste a custom icon from a graphics program in the same way.

If you ever decide that you want to revert to the original icon, just open the Get Info dialog, click on the custom icon to select it, and then choose Cut from the File Menu (or Command + Z). Close the window and your original icon will be restored.

Another way to get customer icons is to download them from icon specialist Web sites like Icon Factory. Most custom icons are stored as file folders, so you just use the instructions above for copying icons from one file to another.

Another Mac OS Finder feature that Windows folks don't enjoy, is Labels, which allows you to apply seven difference custom colors to generic icons to help categorize and distinguish them. You can use the standard label colors and categories supplied by the Mac OS by default, or create your own categories and custom icon colors in the Mac OS Preferences dialog box that can be accessed with the Edit Menu. Just type whatever name you like into the Preferences dialog text fields, and click on the color boxes to summon the Color Picker dialog box where you can choose any new color you like by several different methods.

To apply a Label to file icon, single click the icon to highlight it, then open the File Menu open the Labels submenu, and choose from one of the seven labels that appear. The color you select will be applied to the selected icon.