Stupid Dock Trick

[eyoungren]

As many of you know I maintain a black theme for all my Macs.

For several years I've been using Black Gloss 2.1 through Candybar for my dock

Black Gloss has a black background which until tonight hasn't bothered me because usually my dock is against black wallpaper in that area.

For whatever reason it bothered me tonight. So, I messed around a bit with a transparent dock app which didn't work until I decided, what if I used Candybar to drop in a transparent PNG image for the dock.

Voila!

I have a dock now that is transparent in front of my wallpaper, but REFLECTS whatever color comes near it! And it still retains those blue circle running icons I love.

Now I just have to put it on my other Macs.

Amazing to me that I'm still tweaking this theme all these years later!

[doublepost=1501988311][/doublepost]Here's a little better idea of the reflectiveness…

 

[AphoticD]

Very impressive custom desktop. What do you use for the clocks and weather? Is it the Yahoo widgets?

I like the added touch of masking out the actresses hair in front of the panel.

 

[eyoungren]

Very impressive custom desktop. What do you use for the clocks and weather? Is it the Yahoo widgets?

I like the added touch of masking out the actresses hair in front of the panel.

The desktop is a combination of Geektool, Yahoo widgets and Simple Floating clock.

Widescape weather is one of the few remaining Yahoo widgets (along with Werewolf Monitor) that still work.

I wanted the actress (Audrey Meadows) to appear like that so I cut her out of the pic (using Photoshop), feathered the edges and saved out a transparent PNG. That's placed on the desktop using Geektool over the background image. Since the edges are feathered they merge with the background image which fills in any bad spots I may have had in cutting the image out.

I'm actually proudest though of getting the weather to work in Geektool. Not many of the GT weather geeklets work any more but I found one.

 

[AphoticD]

I wanted the actress (Audrey Meadows) to appear like that so I cut her out of the pic (using Photoshop), feathered the edges and saved out a transparent PNG. That's placed on the desktop using Geektool over the background image. Since the edges are feathered they merge with the background image which fills in any bad spots I may have had in cutter the image out.

I mistakenly assumed the transparent band was a layer in the background image. Now, that's even more involved than I expected... And it does look seamless. That gives me some ideas for a project I'm on. Thanks!

I'm actually proudest though of getting the weather to work in Geektool. Not many of the GT weather geeklets work any more but I found one.

Nice work!

 

[eyoungren]

I mistakenly assumed the transparent band was a layer in the background image. Now, that's even more involved than I expected... And it does look seamless. That gives me some ideas for a project I'm on. Thanks!



Nice work!

No, you were right. The transparent band is another image in Geektool. Lays over the top of the background and the actress images lays over the top of that.

Sorry, should have mentioned that.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I cut her out of the pic (using Photoshop), feathered the edges and saved out a transparent PNG

Clipping out hair, ugh! Used to drive me insane - try clipping out feather boas - that really does try your patience