Creating Your Own Category Icons

When you create a new tag category (by choosing New > Category in the Tags palette), you choose an icon from the list shown in the New Category dialog. Photoshop Elements doesn't give you a direct way to create your own icons, but with a little effort you can do so:

1. Create a new, empty image file in the Editor (from the Organizer, choose File > New > Blank File in Editor).
2. In the New (new file settings) dialog, set the height and width to 20 pixels, and Background Contents to Transparent.
3. Click OK to create the new file, and then use the pencil or other tools to create the contents of the icon.
4. When you're done, choose File > Save As, and from the Format pop-up menu choose PNG for the file type.
5. Click the My Computer icon on the left of the Save As dialog, and then double-click the name of the disk drive onto which you installed Photoshop Elements (typically C:) in the main pane of the dialog.
6. Navigate to Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 3.0\Shared_Assets\caticons.
7. Enter a name for the icon in the filename field and save the file.

The filename is not shown in Elements, but it determines where in the series of category icons this icon will appear. Elements always shows the basic people, places, events, and miscellaneous icons first (i.e., leftmost in the horizontally scrolling list). After these four, the icons from the caticons folder are shown in alphabetical order by filename. The icons installed with Elements all have filenames starting with C or I. Thus, to force your new icon to appear after the four basic icons but before all the others, start the name with the letter A or B.

Tip: Instead of creating a new icon from scratch, you can start by copying one of the existing icons instead; just open one of them from the folder listed above, modify it, and then save it with a new name.

Now choose New > Category in the Tags palette, and your custom icon will appear in the list.

You can add as many new icons as you want. If you want to shorten the list, you can delete any of the existing onesfrom the caticons folder. (Be sure not to delete any icons that you're using, however.) You cannot delete the four basic icons, however.

Here's a few examples of additional icons. To add any of these to your system, right-click on the icon, choose Save Picture As, and choose the folder listed in step 6 above for the location. If you've created icons you'd like to share, send us a message and we'll let you know how to send them to us.

Icon	Description	Contributed by
	Colors	Ian Rumble
	Holidays	Ian Rumble
	Pencil (edited/to be edited)	Ian Rumble
	TIFF	Ian Rumble