Put Up Shelves On Yor Mac, with Finder Backgrounds
A couple of months ago, one clever designer had a neat creative idea: create a background image of shelving to use in the Finder window of his Mac. It creates the impression that your folders or apps are ‘sitting’ on the shelves, which is very cute. A few other designers got inspired, and now I can find a total of 12 great ‘shelves’ for your Mac, from five different sources.
The idea plays to the strengths of the Mac, with it’s huge and detailed icons. In any Finder window the icon can go as large as 128 x 128 pixels (note that the 512 pixels size for icons is reserved only for in the ‘CoverFlow’ view, and only in Leopard), and most of the shelves require you set your icons as 128 x 128 (or, for two of the shelves, 64 x 64) so that the icons ‘sit’ exactly on the shelf, and the icon’s name appears on the thick part of the shelves, as you can see here:
Titles appear on edge of
Before I review all the shelves and give you this links, here’s a quick tutorial on how to set the shelves: right-click within a Finder window and select ‘Show view options’. A small options window appears. Under ‘Background:’ select ‘Picture’ and then pick the shelves image that you’ve downloaded. Lastly, you just need to adjust ‘Icon Size’ and ‘Grid Spacing’ so that it matches this:
Use these icons settings with most shelves
How awesome is that? So, here’s where you can snag all the shelves that individual designers have made so far; all of them are free. Hit the links to the artist’s page to download them:
1.
Five very funky shelves with themed backgrounds which are: Dark Metal, Leather Brown, Starry Night, Cinema, and Blue. Looks great inside either ‘Applications’ or indeed any folder that has some customized icons. For 128×128 pixel-size icons.
2.
Wooden Shelves with wooden panelling and spotlights that will look especially good for the ‘Applications’ folder. For 64×64 pixel-size icons.
3.
Studio wood-and-metal shelves looks particularly gorgeous and was designed specifically for the ‘Movies’ folder so as your movies and TV shows will be appear to be arranged on your shelf. For 128×128 pixel-size icons.
4.
Two “iShelf” versions in graphite or white are super smooth and can be used as a background inside any folder. The white version works best with colourful and high-contrast icons. For 128×128 pixel-size icons.
5.
Dark 3D Shelves contrast a wooden shelf against a very dark background, with some perspective on the left-hand side to make it look as though the shelves are fixed to a wall. For 64×64 pixel-size icons.
Those five links give you 12 great shelves to use within Finder on your Mac, created by excellent designers from all over the world, who offer them up for free for the pleasure-of-use of fellow Mac users. Enjoy!
