How can I browse white icons in Mac OS X Finder (Mavericks)?

Solution 1:

The thread How can I get rid of the white border around picture icons in Finder window contains a long discussion regarding this problem. Here is one excerpt that explains the problem :

It's admittedly a very strange issue. It deals with how Leopard sees the icon - if the file preview is already embedded in the icon, then it displays with no border, if not, then it uses the white frame. Test this by going to that folder with both in it and click View/Show View Options. In there, de-check "Show icon preview", and you should see the bordered icons go to default file type icons and the unframed ones remain the same.

The solution therefore is to use Automator to add thumbnails to all the images that will be used by finder. One method is :

Get Selected (or Specified) Finder Items --> Add Thumbnail Icon to Image Files.

Another guy used this method and automated it :

OK- great and I was able to "write" an automator 'script' and even batch converted about 300 jpg's from one folder.

This changed all the photos in that folder to the current time and date for both MODIFIED ON and CREATED ON.

Here is the screenshot of what the Automator workflow should look like:

Solution 2:

You won't like this solution. But from what I can see, it's your only solution.

Open up each icon in Preview.app, and copy the entire image to your clipboard, then perform "Get Info" on each icon and click and paste your clipboard onto the top-left icon of the Get Info window.

So, you will go from this (default):

To this (note the transparent background):

Now, when you set Finder's background colour to something other then white, the thumbnail will be transparent thus showing you your white icon:

Note: Obviously, this will only work if the icon has a transparent background.