We are winding down another month, and summer has also officially started.  There’s lot of stuff going on, so be sure to check all the galleries because there were just too many great skins to feature this week.

Now for this weeks picks!

Happy Friday, and welcome to another edition of This Week in Skinning!  There was lots of good stuff happening in the skinning world this week including the release of DeskScapes 3.2 which introduces a cool new wallpaper coloring feature.  We also had more Master Skin uploads this week that you should definitely check out.

Now for this weeks picks!

	Waterfall Splash by amitsaran Waterfall animated wallpapers have been very popular over the years, and I can see why with beautiful scenes like this.
	Storm Brewing LV by Frankief This is a great wallpaper, but it also makes a great logon for Windows when used with LogonStudio.
	Diamonds checks and stripes by ahabkaba If you have ObjectDock, this is a very cool set of tile backgrounds to use.
	Rendezvous by Richard Mohler This is just an awesome scene.  Great job on this!
	Aero Station by Mirsguy I really love the overall design and look of this WindowBlinds skin.  Really no need to describe it, just download it and see for yourself.

DeskScapes 3.2 has been released recently, and one of the cool new features is the ability to recolor static wallpapers.  Along with the Effects feature, this gives you a wide range of customization abilities for wallpaper that you will just not find anywhere else.  If you have a favorite wallpaper that just doesn’t match your WindowBlinds skin, then most likely you can adjust it to your liking using DeskScapes.

Take a quick tour on how to use it:

Just select a static wallpaper and the ‘Change Color” tab will appear at the bottom of the DeskScapes window.

In the coloring tab you have a variety of options to color your wallpaper.  The drop-down menu will give you a choice of specific color ranges to target for more specific coloring, or you can just recolor the entire wallpaper. 

You can then use the sliders to adjust the color and saturation of the wallpaper.  While adjusting the sliders you will see the changes in the preview, and when you are happy with the changes just click Apply.  As you can see in my example above, I like the wallpaper I selected but want to make the water more “intense” so after recoloring the water, I think it looks great!

For more information about DeskScapes visit www.stardock.com/products/deskscapes/.

Where did this week go so fast?  Well Friday is here again and I don’t need to tell you again what that means, but I will anyways and that is it’s time for This Week in Skinning.  TWiS is the best and the only weekly skin and theme feature on the internet today, and we shall not be outdone!

Now for this weeks picks!

	Plaid unbrella by poetoffire I like seeing unusual and unique skins, and you don’t see a plaid umbrella skin every day on WC.
	Stratos DX Dock by RedneckDude Stratos is a hot, new Master WindowBlinds skin from 2of3, and RND has made this matching DX dock, and it is steaming as well.
	IronMan Music Icons by sAARGe Whether you are a fan of Iron Man or not, this is a very cool icon set.  There are other IronMan icons in the gallery, so be sure to check it out.
	Softer by bk13GarbageMan I’m always impressed with the RightClick skins that are submitted, and this is another one that deserves some recognition.
	Deliberate by DEVJIT This is a beautiful wallpaper.  The colors and design is fantastic.  Great job!
	Revolver by essorant One of the many Master skins we had this week.  I can’t pick a favorite as they are all superb, but this skin is what I have been using the most this week.

Can you believe it is June already?  We are rolling into summer, and this week has especially been good as several Master skins have been released, and a couple more on the way. 

Lets check out this weeks picks!

	Robotic Defense Retriever by theAVMAN This is just a very cool theme for CursorFX.  An incredible amount of detail and cool animation.
	Tropical Cavern by Ausvet It’s summer time, you need to put something beachy on your desktop.
	Contrast by pinchecl A darker style of icons for IconPackager that will go great with some of the more recent WindowBlinds skin in the gallery.
	Pastels by jazzilady The color combination are great, and make for a funky desktop.  Nice work!
	Sunflower by Urant This is just a very bright and refreshing wallpaper.  Fantastic!
	Snow Blinds by gmc2 A clean and minimal WindowBlinds skin with a great use of transparency in the taskbar.

We are on the verge of a long holiday weekend, and Impulse has a ton of great sales to keep you occupied for the next couple of days.  Before we get into all the sales, lets re-cap some of the highlights on Impulse this week.  First up we have some DLC goodness for the hit Splinter Cell Conviction.  Titled the Deniable Ops Insurgency Pack, it delivers several new co-op missions for you and friend to play through.

Next up we have the pre-orders open for Need for Speed World.  This action driving MMO will let you play with your friends or against them and thousands of other players in an open world setting.  By pre-ordering through Impulse you get several exclusive bonuses including access to all remaining beta events, access to the Head Start Event, increased XP, VIP status, and more!

Another item to mention is Prince of Persia – The Forgotten Sands pre-order.  If you are heading to the theaters to see this, then I recommend picking up a copy of the game to play through yourself when it is released.    If you pre-order through Impulse, you will also get Prince of Persia Warrior Within free!

As I said before, there are a ton of sales going on this weekend, and most notable is Sins of a Solar Empire for just $4.  There is no excuse not to get this, and it’s also a perfect price to grab a copy for a friend or family member.  Aside from that, there are more games and applications on sale and you can see the full list here.

News and Articles:

• Stardock Spring Sale!
• Impulse Weekly Top 10
• Stardockers: Get ready for information overload
• GamePro Gets a Preview of Impulse::Reactor and Facebook Connect
• Get to Know Fences Pro
• Elemental: Beta 1 retrospective

New and Updated Releases on Impulse:

• Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction Deniable Ops: Insurgency Pack
• Hegemony - Philip of Macedon
• Voodoo Dice
• Call of Atlantis
• Need for Speed World
• Around the World in 80 Days

Weekend Impulse Buys

Another week down, and just in time for a nice long weekend!  I hope you have some great plans, and I still hope to see some skins rolling in this weekend.  The Beginning of Summer contest is still going on, and I’m going to extend the date out a couple of weeks just to get some more skins in, so if you haven’t submitted yet, you still have some time. 

Now for this weeks picks!

	Beach Vacation by amitsaran Just a beautiful beach scene to get your warmed up for summer.
	Chrome and Glass  Tile by Vervi59 This is a really cool set of tile backgrounds for ObjectDock.  Great detail!
	Ecalibur (TM Suite) by Philly0381 Philly has once again compiled a beautiful suite of skins based on the Excalibur project.
	Mauvacious by Nimbin Another sweet RightClick theme with a smooth design.
	Sunrise wallpaper pack by teddybearcholla These are some beautiful picture of sunsets.  Great job!
	Thunder Storm WB by treetog Treetog has taken the time to update another classic skin to be compatible with Windows 7.  Nice work!

Fences Pro rocks, I mean that is something I think we can all agree on.  The free version is extremely popular, but the Pro version of Fences has features that make the upgrade worthwhile.  Lets take a look at some of the features of Fences Pro.

Default Fence for New Icons

This is my personal favorite feature.  A lot of icons get put on my desktop, and although it’s easy just to drag them to a Fence, why waste that time when Fences Pro will do it for me.  During the day I download lots of skins from WinCustomize.com such as WindowBlinds skins for review.  I might download several at a time, and that can quickly add tons of clutter to my desktop.

Solution.  I created a rule to send all .wba (WindowBlinds) files to a Fence I created called ‘Skins’. 

Now every .wba file I download will go straight into that Fence.  Of course you can set your own rules for different file types, by time, file size, and much more.

Fading Fences

This is another cool feature that lets you set the opacity of your Fences to make them partially visible, then they will fade to normal by moving your mouse over them. 

Sort Icons within a Fence

If you have a bunch of icons in a particular Fence, you can sort those icons by size, name, date added, etc.  Just right-click the Fence and select ‘Sort Fence by’ and you select how you want your icons sorted.

Get Fences Pro here!