At present, manufacturing an elliptical surface is much more difficult than producing a spherical surface. Differential deposition seems to be a promising technique for producing elliptical focusing mirrors for synchrotron x-ray beams. Here we describe a way to generate deposition profiles that turn spherical surfaces into elliptical surfaces. All parameters of the elliptical surface, the spherical surface, and thus, the deposition profile are optimized with the parameters of the optical system, i.e., the source-image distance, the magnification factor, the critical angle for x-ray total reflection, and the acceptance angle of the mirror. It was found that most deposition profiles generated for synchrotron radiation can be implemented with currently existing deposition techniques.