17 2 redoing mac OS xs graphics

Control-click or right-click the icon of the program you want to edit; choose Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu.. Inside are the objects of your search: the graphics files oft

17.2 Redoing Mac OS X's Graphics

The professional interface artists at Apple use Adobe Photoshop, just like professional artists everywhere else But in Mac OS X, they've made very little effort to cover their tracks In Cocoa programs and even a few Carbonized ones, every element of the famous Aqua interface is nothing more than a Photoshop-generated graphics file

The beauty of graphics files, of course, is that you can edit them Maybe you just want to adjust the colors Maybe you found a replacement graphic online Or maybe you actually want to draw a new graphic from scratch In each of these cases, by using a program like Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you can dress up your own desktop in your own way

In addition to a little artistic talent, all you need to know is how to open the graphics that constitute the interface of each program The routine generally goes like this:

1 In the Finder, open the Applications folder Control-click (or right-click) the icon

of the program you want to edit; choose Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu

You may remember from Chapter 5 that most Mac OS X programs may look like single icons, but are actually disguised folders containing all of their own support files

You can choose almost any Cocoa program to edit in this way:Address Book, Chess, iChat, Mail, iPhoto, Safari, iDVD, iMovie, TextEdit, whatever

2 Open the Contents Resources folder

Inside are the objects of your search: the graphics files (often in TIFF or PDF format) that constitute the "face" of the program you're editing (Sometimes they're one more folder down, in a folder representing your language—English.lproj, for example.)

When you're editing the iPhoto, for example, the Resources folder contains the graphics that create slideshow playback buttons, the toolbar buttons, and so on There's nothing to stop you from swapping in photos of your friends' heads in their places Figure 17-2 shows another example

While you're at it, you may also want to open up Mac OS X's Mail program and redesign its toolbar icons The sky's the limit!

Tip: If you think you may want to return to the program's original look after your

experiment, make a safety copy of these files before proceeding

Figure 17-2 Top: Cocoa programs are nothing more than a bunch of artistically done Photoshop TIFF files, buried in the program's package Contents Resources folder When you feel the need for change, go ahead

and edit them—hey, it's your computer

Bottom: When you're editing the Calculator program, you can edit the LCD_center.tif, LCD_right tif, and LCD_left.tif files (left) to change the look

of the readout window (right) In this example, the "center" portion gets stretched as wide as necessary to fill the width of the Calculator screen

3 Open the TIFF files in Photoshop

Edit them brilliantly

4 Save your changes

The deed is done You now have a program that you can definitely call your own

17.2.1 Editing the Trash, Dashboard, and Finder Icons

You can edit the Finder's Dock icon, Dashboard's Dock icon, and the Trash icons (empty and full) exactly as described above—but you have to peek into a different corner to find them The Dock program isn't in your Applications folder; it's in your System folder And

in Mac OS X, the System folder is sacred territory, forbidden to humans An error

message lets you know that you're not allowed to edit the graphics files that make up Mac

OS X itself (rather than its applications)

In this Mac OS X hack and in several others in this chapter, you have to find a way

around this kind of OS self-protection You can go about it in either of two ways:

• Log into Mac OS X as the root user, as described on Section 16.9

• Simpler yet: -drag the icon you want out of the System folder, edit a copy of it (preserve the original, just in case), and then -drag it back into place

As soon as you begin to -drag one of these sacred files, Mac OS X asks you to prove your hackworthiness by entering an administrator's name and password— and then it lets you proceed with your surgery

In any case, to edit the Finder or Trash icons, you'd start by opening the System

Library CoreServices folder Control-click Dock and choose Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu The Dock window opens Open the Contents Resources folder These are the graphics you want to edit (as PNG graphics instead of TIFF):

finder.png, trashempty.png, trashfull.png, and dashboard.png

17.2.2 Replacing the Poof

When you drag an icon off the Dock or toolbar, it disappears with a puff of virtual

smoke—a cute, cartoon-like animation that Apple's been trying to work into its operating systems ever since the days of the Newton palmtop Most people find this tiny,

one-second display of interface magic charming and witty, but others argue that it demeans the dignity of the otherwise professional-looking Mac OS X

If you follow that latter camp, you can replace the animation just by editing Apple's own five-frame "poof " animation Figure 17-3 shows the procedure

17.2.3 Editing Your Menulets

You can colorize the little menu bar symbols fondly called menulets, or even completely redesign their graphics Like many other Mac OSX screen elements, these are nothing more than little tiny graphics saved in PDF format

Here again, you can't save changes to them unless you (a) log in as the root user, or(b) -drag the original files to the desktop, edit them, and then -drag them back in Open the System Library CoreServices Menu Extras folder

Here, you can find individual files (actually packages) for almost every menulet: Battery, Clock, Displays, and so on Open which ever one you want to customize (Airport menu,

for example) by Control-clicking it and choosing Show Package Contents As usual, open the Contents Resources folder

Inside are a number of TIFF files that represent the various forms your menulet might take; the Volume icon, for example, seems to emit different numbers of sound waves depending on your volume setting Edit each of the graphics as you see fit (The ones whose names are tagged with an s or w represent the inverted highlighted graphic, which you see when you actually click the menulet.)

Figure 17-3 The "poof" animation is nothing more than five individual frames of cartoon smoke, 128 pixels square You'll find its file sitting inside the Dock package,

as described in the previous section, along with the finder.png and Trash files As shown here in Photoshop Elements, you can substitute any graphics you want, as long as you fit them evenly on this 640-pixel-tall "film strip" (that is, 128 pixels

times five) Save, quit, and then restart

POWER USERS' CLINIC

Giant Icons

In Mac OS X 10.5, Apple did something secret and artistic: It quadrupled the

potential size of its icons Instead of the measly 128 pixels square (which is all

that most people ever see, maximum), you can blow them up to a colossal 512

pixels square They're less like icons than art you can hang on your wall

To see the effect, you have to use Terminal (see Chapter 16) Type this

command, exactly as you see it here, but all on one line:

com.apple.finder

DesktopViewOptions

-dict IconSize -integer 256; killall Finder

It's quite a shocking sight—and, in fact, rather too big to be useful It also works only on desktop icons—not icons in folders

To turn the effect off, press -J to open the View Options dialog box Adjust the icon-size slider; the least touch of that slider turns the giganto-icon effect off again