class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/image104.png" alt="" />One of my favorite features in href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/windows-7/">Windows 7 is Aero Glass. There’s something really appealing about the whole Aero look, and I love changing the look and feel of my system by changing Aero colors.

But Windows 7 only offers 14 pre-set Aero colors, and if I need a change I have to go to my display options and do it manually. So Aero colors are a lovely thing, but let’s admit it, they’re a bit limited. So I’ve rounded up some cool tools that will enliven your Aero colors experience, be it custom colors, colors that match wallpapers, or even the weather.

href="http://hb860.deviantart.com/art/AeroTuner-183456299">AeroTuner

AeroTuner is a portable app that helps you do one thing: customize Aero color. If you’re tired of those same old default options (and let’s face it, only 3-4 of them are really usable), use AeroTuner to create your very own Aero color.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-20h02_46.png" alt="2011-09-20 20h02_46" width="451" height="451" border="0" />

With this little application you can choose your main color and glow color, and then start playing with color balance, blur balance and Aero stripes. You can pretty much create any look you want, and within seconds, your system will have a unique look no one else can match!

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-20h03_46.png" alt="2011-09-20 20h03_46" width="449" height="436" border="0" />

If you change your mind, simply click restore and your previous colors will return. You can also find your previous colors in the Personalize area when you right-click the desktop area.

href="http://aura.codeplex.com/">Aura

Windows 8 is going to have a new feature that will change Aero Glass color according to wallpaper. But what if you don’t want to wait? Try Aura.

This small and portable tool can change Aero color according to either wallpaper color or active window icon color. If you’re using IE 9 (which I’m not), it should also change color according to active tabs.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-20h23_43.png" alt="2011-09-20 20h23_43" width="522" height="479" border="0" />

What Aura essentially does is turn the task bar transparent, so it reflects the wallpaper, and the windows themselves get a color that matches the wallpaper or the active window. I’m not sure how the algorithm works, but it seems to be giving out greys a fair number of the times. Nevertheless, the general feeling is rather pleasant.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-20h46_59.png" alt="2011-09-20 20h46_59" width="525" height="323" border="0" />

href="http://www.carthagosoft.net/AeroBlend.php">AeroBlend

AeroBlend is very similar to Aura, but in my opinion seems to work a little better. This might be due to the algorithm that it uses to calculate the colors. It is also an actual installation, and not a portable app.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-20h40_27.png" alt="2011-09-20 20h40_27" width="370" height="202" border="0" />

As in Aura, you can choose whether it should change colors according to wallpaper, icon or content (not only IE9!), and you can control the color intensity right there from the settings window. You can also choose to check the mysterious option “Fade colos”.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-20h36_44.png" alt="2011-09-20 20h36_44" width="550" height="450" border="0" />

I’m assuming “Fade colos” is fade colors, and some testing seem to show that this is in fact the case. When you uncheck it, the change in color is immediate. The difference, however, is almost unnoticeable.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-20h38_50.png" alt="2011-09-20 20h38_50" width="486" height="290" border="0" />

As you can see, AeroBlend creates a pretty good match to wallpaper color, and the entire work environment becomes much more lively. Fun!

href="http://spikex.net/2010/04/aeroweather-weather-based-aero-color/">AeroWeather

One of the coolest tools I’ve found on my quest to boost my Aero color is AeroWeather. This nifty little tool changes Aero color according to either temperature or weather conditions.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-21h06_50.png" alt="2011-09-20 21h06_50" width="341" height="431" border="0" />

To start, you’ll need to set up your location (zip code works in US only) and choose whether the colors should change according to temperature or conditions. If you choose temperature, you can decide the range according to which you’d like the color to change. When the temperature is close to the lower end, your desktop will look bluish-purplish:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-21h05_34.png" alt="2011-09-20 21h05_34" width="431" height="309" border="0" />

When it’s close to the higher end, it will turn reddish:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-21h05_06.png" alt="2011-09-20 21h05_06" width="463" height="310" border="0" />

There are all sorts of other colors in the middle.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-21h06_06.png" alt="2011-09-20 21h06_06" width="459" height="312" border="0" />

AeroWeather can also dim your Aero color at night, which is a really cool feature. If you can’t see a real change, try increasing color intensity in Windows’ Personalize –> Window color.

href="http://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.13">AeroRainbow

AeroRainbow is another fun application – this time, an Aero color randomizer. This little app comes from the same developers as AeroTuner, but does something a bit different. The main feature is a constantly changing Aero color, either randomly or according to a list you can build yourself.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-21h22_30.png" alt="2011-09-20 21h22_30" width="579" height="402" border="0" />

You can decide how often the change occurs, but the slowest setting is one change per minute, which is still a bit fast for my tastes. You can also use AeroRainbow to change your colors according to wallpaper, active window or active window icon, and choose whether this will be according to dominate color or average color.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2011-09-20-21h24_41.png" alt="2011-09-20 21h24_41" width="450" height="471" border="0" />

If you create a nice color list, you can have a truly fetching desktop that never gets boring!

Bottom Line

Aero color tweakers, if you use them right, can help you create a system that is both fun and aesthetic. Just trying these tools out made me a happier person. Go ahead, indulge yourself and start playing with colors. It’s the easiest way to change your work environment so your eyes never get bored.

Do you know of some more interesting color customization tools for Aero? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=colors&search_group=&orient=&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&commercial_ok=&color=&show_color_wheel=1#id=63322462&src=a0b49696413198094731f8db8705a1d9-2-68" rel="nofollow">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Colorpicker.jpg" alt="color picker firefox" />Graphic artists no longer need to have an eye for color. With the kind of tools available these days, you could be color blind and still do your image just right. Okay, that was an extravagant exaggeration, but as we have seen with the previous article on href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-free-color-picking-tools-choose-colors-desktop/">3 Free Color Picking Tools to Choose Colors From Your Desktop choosing colors from the numerous hues around you has become dead easy.

Eyedroppers and color pickers can work outside a mammoth graphic tool like Photoshop and CorelDraw. Most of these tools are small and portable. But today, we will diverge from desktop color picking tools and look at five browser based ones.

After all, a graphic artist can take his inspiration from anywhere…and if it’s anywhere online, a few very useful href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/firefox-addons/">Firefox add-ons could come real handy.

href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/colorzilla/">ColorZilla

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Colorpicker01.jpg" alt="color picker firefox" width="208" height="355" />

This advanced eyedropper tool for Firefox is top of the heap as it shows the maximum number of downloads and a good bunch of good reviews. As you can see in the above screen, ColorZilla has quite a few functional features like an Advanced Eyedropper, Color Picker, Page Zoomer, Palette Browser, and a CSS Gradient Generator.

• The Color Picker dialog box is very similar to that in Photoshop.
• In case you have a problem picking up a colored pixel, you can zoom a webpage to a maximum of 1000% and use the eyedropper to pick up the color of the pixel. Auto-copy of pixel values to the clipboard makes it easy to paste it in your HTML editor or elsewhere.
• You can use the Palette Browser to pick up colors from the different palettes available and also save user created ones.

href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pixelzoomer/">PixelZoomer

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Colorpicker02.jpg" alt="color picker firefox addon" width="580" height="333" />

PixelZoomer is a neat Firefox add-on that takes a screenshot of the visible area of your webpage and gives you a few pixel mapping tools to work with the image in a separate window (or tab).

• A selection tool helps to select an area and estimate precise measurements
• You can zoom the screenshot to 3200% and pick up the color of any pixel with the eyedropper tool.
• The eyedropper tool can pick up color values and copy the HEX code into any other application.
• You can use it as a simple screenshot tool as it allows you to save the image as a PNG file.

href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rainbow-color-tools/">Rainbow Color Tools

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Colorpicker03.jpg" alt="color picker firefox" width="580" height="341" />

Rainbow Color Tools is actually a set of four powerful tools. For a web designer, the tools are very intuitive as they are almost one or two click operations.

• Inspector – You can move your mouse over any pixel on a webpage and get a preview of the color and the HEX values (you can change this in the settings). A single click copies the pixel values to the clipboard for pasting elsewhere.
• Picker – The color picker helps you pick up HSV and RGB values, and the typeface of any element on the webpage. The more precise pixel tool helps you take the color values of any image pixel.
• Website Analyzer – This is a quick tool which gives you the color scheme from the current website’s images and CSS. You can choose to copy or save the color values.
• Library – if you choose to save any of the colors you pick up, they enter the library where you can view them again in the color picker and reuse them in any other application.

Firefox Add-ons Gallery gives you two more color picking tools ( href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firepicker/">Firepicker and href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rainbowpicker/">Rainbowpicker) based around a simple color picker dialog box. These three Firefox add-ons are good allied options for the web designer who wants to quickly pick up colors while browsing the web. My pick of the three is Rainbow Color Tools for its ease of use and HEX value copying mechanism. Which one is yours? Do you have at least one of these three tools in your list of add-ons?

Image Credit: rel="nofollow" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=73761634">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/solarized-yinyang.png" alt="solarized color scheme" />Color is everywhere around us. For most people, color is about beauty or aesthetics. But if you spend your days in front of a computer monitor, color can be an important tool in the fight against fatigue and eye strain. Just about every text editor supports syntax coloring, and many editors come with an array of color schemes for you to choose from. There are virtually thousands of other schemes available online, and yet I’ve never seen one that’s quite like class="vt-p" href="http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized">Solarized.

For starters, Solarized isn’t aimed at one particular editor or piece of software. You can get Solarized for class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-7-reasons-to-give-the-vim-text-editor-a-chance">Vim, Emacs, IntelliJ and six other editors, for four different terminal emulators, and even for Mutt (a console email client). It is also available as a color palette for Photoshop or GIMP.

Solarized author, Ethan Schoonover, did not just pick colors he felt were pretty. Instead, he used something called class="vt-p" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space">Lab color space to figure out the exact differences in lightness various screen elements should have, and selected the colors based on fixed color wheel relationships (some of the hues are analogous, some are Triad-based, etc.). Sure, the result is pretty, but it’s also very readable.

The Solarized color schemes are available both with a light and dark background. Here’s what the light-background variation looks like:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/image-154.jpg" alt="solarized color scheme" width="580" height="483" />

And here’s the dark variation of the same file:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/image-155.jpg" alt="solarized colors vim" width="580" height="483" />

You can see how similar both modes are. They feel like one color scheme, but both are very readable. In fact, they’re both readable to the same exact degree: they have symmetric lightness differences, so switching between dark and light background retains the same perceived amount of contrast between scheme elements.

It’s a minimalistic scheme, with just sixteen colors. The number of colors can even be brought down further, to just five specific hues, and it would still be quite readable.

Another thing that’s very impressive about Solarized is the presentation. Most color schemes are just a single text file with hardly any documentation. Solarized has a gorgeous webpage (colorized according to the scheme, of course), where the author lays down his reasoning for the scheme and its advantages in excruciating detail. The two screenshots above were taken from that class="vt-p" href="http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized">very page, where you can find many other screenshots showing different file types in Vim, as well as many other applications.

I’ve been using Solarized for a few weeks now, mainly in Vim via Putty. For this particular scenario, installation was not trivial: I’ve had to configure Solarized for PuTTY, and then configure it for Vim as well. Even so, the colors I get on my own screen seem somewhat different from what I see on the Solarized website. I do like the look I ended up with, but you’ll have to agree it doesn’t look exactly like the beautiful screenshots above:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/image-156.jpg" alt="solarized color scheme" width="557" height="360" />

That’s the only drawback really. If you just use a single application (say, GVim or another local text editor), you should have no problem installing Solarized on your system. But if you need to get it working via PuTTY and Vim, you’re in for a bit of a challenge. Having said that, if any of you manage to replicate the exact Solarized look using Putty/Vim, I’d love to hear about it in the comments — perhaps you can teach me a thing or two! />
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Are you bored with your fade and poor picture quality of your Windows XP? Your downloaded color photos look black and white? Well, now you have a solution. Increase your Windows XP color depth and quality via remote desktop or terminal services connection. The color depth is limited in order to improve your connection performance especially when the link is slow.

High quality video display of the remote computer or remote virtual machine over your Remote Desktop connection is not so important or that doesn’t make a difference. If you want advanced high definition graphics display then you should connect to a Windows XP system on 16-bit color quality which will make some colors look strange.

This will possibly increase and push the limit on the color depth of any other connection to your Terminal Server or Remote Desktop Server via your Remote Desktop or Terminal Service connection which is useful especially in case of Windows XP Mode. You can use this to run virtualized apps like IE6 natively on Windows 7 host desktop where your Windows 7 host connects to the virtual machine via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). With the change in color quality and depth your Internet surfing will be more colorful.

You can change the color depth limit on Windows XP. All you have to do is click on the Tools menu of your virtual machine window and then select Disable Integration Features before you continue with the procedure. Then after changing the maximum color depth limit re-enable your integration features.

And follow these seven steps:

In your Windows XP operating system, click on Start menu and then click Run Type GPEdit.msc to open Group Policy Editor Then navigate to Local Computer Policy, click Computer Configuration, then click Administrative Templates, click on Windows Components, click Terminal Services. In your right pane, double-click on Limit Maximum Color Depth setting. In your Properties dialog, select the radio button of Enabled and then set your Color Depth value to 24 bit or Client Compatible. Click OK when you are done. Restart your computer after this.

These steps will allow your Remote Desktop and Terminal Services connection to connect it at a higher color depth. But if you are connecting to Windows XP in virtual machine, it should check that the Color Quality setting should be set to either 24-bit or 32-bit color in your high screen resolution. You can get more information on this from Internet.

In a simpler way you can change your color depth and resolution in Windows XP from your computer by following these six steps:

Click Start, go to Control Panel. Double-click on Display. Click your Settings tab. Change your desirable color depth using the Color Quality menu. Change the resolution using the Screen Resolution slider. Lastly click OK to apply the changes

You can follow any of these two procedures to increase your color depth and quality of your Windows XP. You can even get more information about it from Internet

Stylish: addons.mozilla.org APENAS HUVO un UPDATE y el icono ahora es diferente, el icono tiene un simbolo de: [S] no se preocupe si no sale como en el video del(librito con pincel)….=]

this guide will show you how you can change the windows 7 colors.

Have a problem? Ask in the forum: www.mob3.co.uk or the live chat: www.mob3.co.uk Here I show you how to change the color of your Windows XP or Vista folders for free, very handy to use if you have a lot of folders and you want specific ones to stand out. icolorfolder: icolorfolder.sourceforge.net

Stylish: addons.mozilla.org APENAS HUVO un UPDATE y el icono ahora es diferente, el icono tiene un simbolo de: [S] no se preocupe si no sale como en el video del(librito con pincel)….=]