Copy Family & Paste Family commands
These commands are like copying and pasting icons in the Finder; they work on the entire icon family at once.If you copy an icon in the Finder, you can use the Paste Family command to paste all of the icon types at once. Conversely, you can use the Copy Family command and then go to the Finder and paste the icon onto an item.
If you want to get icons into a resource file, such as a Kaleidoscope scheme, you can use the Copy Family command and then paste all of the resources in using ResEdit. This will give you all of the ICN#, icl8, etc. types, as well as the all-in-one icns resource. To go the other way, you can copy an icns resource and then use Icon Machine's Paste Family command.
Mac OS X icon files
Icon Machine now uses the Mac OS X ".icns" format for its own files. To make a .icns file for use in an OS X application, you can just add the .icns extension when you save. If you wish, you can also remove the file's custom icon (to make the file smaller); the icon data is still stored in the file.
Working with Adobe Photoshop
You can copy or drag an image from Photoshop, and Icon Machine will automatically use the image's transparency to create the icon's mask. Icons can also be copied from Icon Machine and pasted into Photoshop.
Since selections also have transparency, you can easily assemble badged folder icons or whatever combination you want.
Working with the Finder
The Finder uses the 1-bit mask (not the 8-bit bask) to determine the shape of the icon, for tasks like how much of the screen to redraw when an icon is selected, or figuring out if a mouse click is inside an icon. To make sure your 32-bit icon will work correctly, make sure that even the slightly opaque pixels correspond to black pixels in the 1-bit mask. If you see strange glitches in your 32-bit icon in the Finder, or you can't seem to click on it, you probably need to adjust the 1-bit mask.
The easiest way to fix the 1-bit mask is to drag the 32-bit version onto the 1-bit version, and Icon Machine will automatically calculate the mask.
Developing your own techniques
Experiment with dragging to and dropping from the different parts of the Icon Machine window. Once you have become familiar with how they all work together you will be able to work more quickly and perhaps achieve some effects that you couldn't otherwise do.
Sometimes creating a new document helps just to give you some temporary extra working space. You can use that space to construct an element and then drag it into your main icon window, taking advantage of the transparency mask so that the compositing comes out right.