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Submission details

10 +18/-8 votes

Finder/Labels: colored folders icons

Submitted by mojo2012 on September 27, 2008 to Aesthetics, Usability

It would be nice if the color of the folder icon would match the color of the chose label.

Set the folder icon color to the same as the label.

Medium

Medium

Not fixed

Discussion (7 comments)

ebaur wrote on September 27, 2008, 3:51pm

This is how things worked back in the classic Mac OS days (the icon was tinted and the name was not). Unfortunately, it didn't work as well in practice as it might sound. The basic folder icons would more or less work (except the blue label, which often didn't change the look of the folder enough to be distinctive), and custom icons would sometimes look horrible due to the tinting.

Labels were under-supported for awhile in Mac OS X, but I happen to like what they've come up with finally.

What I'm curious about... is what is the *need* in this case that has to be addressed. The highlight can be seen in all views clearly, since the name is always there. (Except only kind of in Cover Flow, which is kind of annoying, although I don't notice since I don't use Cover Flow.)

abitgone wrote on September 27, 2008, 10:18pm

I prefer just the label changing colour.

jasper wrote on September 29, 2008, 12:14pm

You know, those are Vista folders... And they look like hell colored!

Good idea, though, however, I'de rather be able to create custom folder icons, too, without the pain of Photoshop. You know, just make a black/white image and Finder itself will paste it on the folder (like the imprints of documents, library, you know - every special location).

ebaur wrote on September 29, 2008, 3:31pm

It looks like there may be third party utilities that can help out with exactly that:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17225


mojo2012 wrote on September 30, 2008, 9:47am

Cool app, despite it is commercial ware.

To get those (vista) folder icons i went to www.iconfinder.net. There were only to sets of colored folders. I took these, because the others look worse ...

@Jasper: the vista icons are quite the same, that's true. But they are mirror-inverted.

jasper wrote on October 1, 2008, 7:00am

Ow, like that. I would just have opened a MacOS folder and used the Hue/Saturation (with colorize on) in Photoshop and changed the hue. Like this: http://www.planc.be/jasper/foldercolors.png .

mojo2012 wrote on October 11, 2008, 12:05pm

That's quite awsome and would do the trick ;-)

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