Opening and Saving Icons
The Mac OS lets you change, or customize, the icon of almost any file, folder, or disk. Normally you would have to create your custom icon in a graphics program and then paste it into the Finder's Get Info window, but Icon Machine lets you edit custom icons directly, giving you more control over the appearance of the icon.
When Icon Machine opens an item, it reads the item's icon, whether it be a custom icon or the default icon for that type of item. If the item is an icon file (often with a name ending in .icns), then the custom icon may be ignored in favor of the file's contents.
When you save an icon, Icon Machine updates its custom icon (it may take a moment for the Finder to show the change). The Apply Icon To command lets you select any file, folder, or disk, and Icon Machine will save your icon as that item's custom icon.
Exporting Icons
The Export Icon command lets you export icons in a variety of image file formats, using QuickTime graphics exporters. The currently selected icon type will be exported.
GIF is not part of the standard set of QuickTime exporters, but PNG is a suitable replacement in almost any case, since it also supports transparent images.
The Edit Icon Plugin
The Edit Icon plugin is a contextual menu plugin. See the accompanying Installation document for instructions on installing the plugin. Once installed, the Edit Icon plugin will add an "Edit Icon" command to the Finder's contextual menus, which will open the selected item in Icon Machine.
A contextual menu is a pop-up menu that appears when you hold down the control key and click on something, giving you quick access to menu commands that apply to whatever you clicked on. Icon Machine's own windows also have contextual menus; try control-clicking on the various parts of the windows to see what they can do for you.