Menubar Drop Shadow Elimination

By adding a strip of solid color to the top of your wallpaper
you can make the menubar appear opaque. However, this
trick does not eliminate the menubar drop shadow. So let
me explain how to do that in Photoshop.

The following technique lightens the area immediately below
the menubar so that the drop shadow returns it to its original
colors. Important: this only works if the original wallpaper is
dark enough in this area - no R, G or B pixel values > 159.

First of all you need to get the drop shadow in its purest form.
Set your wallpaper to a pure white image and then take a
screenshot of your whole screen. Be sure there are no nearby
icons or windows to cast a drop shadow near the menu.

Next you want to paint everything but the drop shadow pure
white. You may find the dimensions given here useful:



When you have whitened the other areas you end up with
something like this (only part is shown):



Now invert the image (again, only part is shown):



Finally you combine that with your original wallpaper. Put your wallpaper
in one layer, and the inverted shadow image in the layer above and apply
the *color dodge* blending mode.

Here's the original:



And here's the result:



Oh, and for good measure I've given the menubar spots