How do you make a irregular sized icon?

[MalusDomestica]

Hello, I have been fooling around with google for like 3 days now trying to find an answer to my question and its possible that my problem is I have over looked some of my schooling in Photoshop. I have been trying to make a word bubble shaped icon like ichat for the toolbar. But after I save it as a .ico or .png it turns out square with white behind the word bubble image anyone know how to fix my problem? It would be greatly appreciated!

[ezekielrage_99]

You will need to create the icon as 128X128 image, then downsample it. Out of experience favicons wont work properly with alpha and not being in a square layout.

Also a little more info would be good, what software are you using because the Save for Web function should save a PNG with transparency?

[lucidmedia]

are you trying to create an icon for the OSx dock? I am a little unclear where/how this icon will be used.

For dock icons, you usually create versions of your icon at:

128x128
48x48
32x32
16x16

and then save them as PNG graphics with no background.