QUOTE(nyi8bmzk @ Aug 27 2008, 09:53 AM)

Sorry if I sound noobish, but how come when you open a .icns file in Icongrapher are there multiple pictures? none of which look exactly like the icon does on the dock?
There are multiple pictures because the icon files (.icns) are scalable (16×16, 32×32, 48×48, 128×128, 256×256 and 512×512 pixels) depending on how you are viewing them in finder, wether it be small icons in list view, medium or large icons in standard icon view or huge icons in coverflow. Maybe someone can explain that a little better but essentially all Mac icons are composed of several different sized images in order to look the best depending on how you are viewing them. In Iconographer the images my look different also because of masks.
You could try out Iconographer or just open the .icns files in Preview and drag one or all of the different sizes that appear next to the large image to your desktop as a tif file, which you can then edit in Photoshop. You could then use Apples Icon Composer (comes in the Developer Tools), the Photoshop plugin Icon Builder or several other methods to build/create the icns file with your new edited images. Sorry if that isn't too clear, maybe someone can do a better job or has a link to a nice page explaining it all.
You could try this little wiki to get some clearer info on it
Apple Icon ImageHere are some free tools to help with some other aspects of creating icons
OS X Icon Editor Pack