Summer is just around the corner, and some of us are already feeling the temperatures rise to reflect this.  For those who already anxious to get their desktops ready for the upcoming season, here are some of my favorite summer wallpapers on WinCustomize.com.

1. A late summer by vozi1

2. Down by the River by boss0190

3. Relaxing by the Seas by DEVJIT

4. Baltic Sunset by zmuda_m

5. The North Sun by inthebloodofeden

Hey WinCustomizers!  Welcome to another Friday and the end of another great week.  Don’t forget to post your desktop screenshot in our monthly thread for a chance to be featured in the desktop of the month!

Now for this weeks picks!

It is just about time to close out the month of April, and wow is this year surely moving pretty fast!  I wish I had more time and space to feature all the skins that deserve to be featured this week as the hard part is always deciding which to feature. 

Now for this weeks picks!

Stardock’s Tiles is one of our latest additions to the desktop productivity lineup, and as with many other apps, this one is completely skinnable.  A skin editor utility is included with Tiles, and putting together a skin from your graphics is actually quite easy.  You can launch the Tiles Skin Editor from the Windows start menu, or from the Tiles directory on your PC. 

The editor window is pretty well laid out, and each section has a brief explanation of what that particular skin area does.  I would also suggest opening one of the default skins in Tiles and take a look at how they are put together.

One of the first steps to take is creating the main background image for Tiles.  Once you have your image (.PNG is needed) then select Pick and select your image for the background.  The skin on Tiles will preview in real-time so you can immediately see what your skin looks like. 

Tip: Make sure you place your images in the skin folder in your Tiles skin folder.

One you have gotten your first image in place, you are really free to continue to add and customize as much as you like.  One cool feature is the ability to layer images for even more creativity.  Moving on, you can select another background for the Filter bar, and of course you can customize the text options to match your skin.  Additional skin areas are available for shadows and overlays for effects on the Tiles. 

This was a basic outline on how to get your Tiles skin started, and obviously there are many more options you can explore in the Tiles skin editor.  A more detailed skinning guide is available in the help menu in the skin editor.

Once your skin is ready, head over to WinCustomize and upload it to our Tiles skin gallery!

The weather is getting warmer (for most of us), and skinning is really beginning to heat up for the spring and summer.  I’m seeing brighter colors being used in skins, and many of these skins and themes I’m also seeing in use by others on many other website.  Lets keep it going and let us know what skins you are working on in the forums!

Now for this weeks picks!

Hey everyone!  The weekend is about here so as usual we want to pick some of the hottest skins available this week on WinCustomize.  Don’t forget we have a new gallery on WC for the beta of Tiles available for Object Desktop subscribers.

Now for this weeks picks!

Spring is here, and as a reminder we have several Spring-inspired premium themes on sale.  With the huge galleries here on WinCustomize, we also have a large collection of skins here as well including a bunch of fantastic looking wallpapers.

Here are some Spring wallpapers I recommend:

Spring Wall Pack by theAVMAN

Sea of Pollen by sydneysiders

Wood Spring by Sc4rfy

Dreamy Summer Morning by DEVJIT

I’m getting to work on a skinning guide for the recently announced Tiles, but until I’m done with that I wanted to present the very basics of skinning Tiles.  This first post regarding skinning is mostly to inform those that skinning is supported, and how to find out how to get going.

https://www.stardock.com/products/tiles/

Tiles includes a skin editor, and you can open it via a shortcut in the Windows start menu, or by opening it from your Tiles directory. 

I would recommend opening an existing Tiles skin and just go through it to see what the elements are what the various settings control.

The simplest way to get a custom look is to have Tiles use a custom background texture.  We talk about doing this all the time with WindowBlinds, and the basic premise is the same here.  Select an image of your choice and Tiles will use it as a background texture.  Just right-click inside Tiles to find this option.

So that is the very basics of Tiles skinning that should get some going, and more tutorials will be coming soon!

DeskScapes is a very popular application for both using animated wallpapers and for managing and using static wallpapers.  In an effort to expand the use and accessibility of DeskScapes a localization feature was added so DeskScapes could display a language other than the default of English.   If you are fluent in another language and can translate a language file with it, then read on!

The language files can be found in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Object Desktop\DeskScapes3\lang

Open one of the English files with an application like Notepad and you can see the format. 

If you would like to help out, just post in this thread or PM me.  If you can complete a language file for DeskScapes we would offer you your choice of a 1 year WinCustomize subscription/renewal, a copy of DeskScapes or WindowBlinds.

Lets get this week closed out already!  There’s not much to talk about this week, but we did have a steady stream of skin submissions this week, so here is our weekly roundup of some of the featured picks for the week!