Classic Shell: Forum

Dirty Windows 7 style for CSM 4.3.1

Way back last year I was trying to recreate the noise in Windows 10 programs into a menu skin.
I never figured it out. Gave up, put on back burner.
Theirs is a lot more even looking. Maybe they put the noise on the rgb channel, or glass color mask?
All I got was dirty noise.

The reason I'm releasing it now, instead of putting in the recycling bin, is this skin can have 7
different sizes of user picture inside the menu, copying the frameless type look in the Metro skin.

It might be of use to people with HIDPI displays.

The noise can be turned off so it looks clean.


EDIT: Added noisy taskbar images for older Win 10
Black glass matching only

Looking at how Windows 10 acrylic works:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... le/acrylic

Is a little bit more complicated than just adding noise layer.
I could have done the noise to be more consistent using tiled feature in Classic Shell Menu skinning,
but I already had a large image to use for stretching submenu.
Trying to use big muscle Aero glass to get larger blur radius does not even work anymore. Too bad.

Extra note

If you don't like the lightish edge lines on user picture, drawn apparently by Windows,
use Ivo's alternate internal "User picture" option in the "General Behavior" tab.
Only .png, png transparent,.bmp can be used though.

Hi jp. How are you?

So I was free and trying to make heavy blur skin, but it didn't quite stood up to my beauty expectations. Thereafter I was browsing forums, only to stumble into your creations. I tried Dirty Windows Skin. It's looks good and got me interested into this noise concept.

So, I tried to add noise layer to the not so good looking Blur Skin. It looked better. After few hours of work, I get bored, but this is what I have got.
Few things are not right like Arrow And Shutdown Selection etc. but everything is working Ok, atleast on my PC.
It also requires clean up of unused bitmaps etc.


Submenu Noise is yet to be added.

Leaving skin here incase anybody is interested in noisy CS Skin.

I might post any updates of mine if I continued to work.

Few Notes on using it:-

1] Changing glass In CS Settings will change glass intensity. Turning off glass will makes things ugly.

2] Set Glass Color in CS Settings White. Glass color will bleed in to whole menu as usual and setting it white will makes things normal. If you are not getting this, try experimenting with glass color at glass intensities > 0 (Effect will be more pronounced at higher intensity like 70 etc.).

3] As Default Glass color is set to white (read 2), you can set custom color in skin options.

Here's the skin.

[EDIT]
Yes, you can change the noise color.

Hi meetHG.

I'm not doing much of anything now.
Maybe only one or two months before this forum gets taken down by Ivo.
Glad you are still experimenting.

As you have done the most playing around with noise added to skins in the past, you know more about it than me.
I see using different intensities of noise peaks(white), and dips(black), along with a grey level can get different effects like splatter, salt n pepper look.
For myself, I tried to get that smooth noisy look of the Win 10 "Personalize" window but just can't get it smooth enough.
I know they boost the saturation color of the desktop background just behind, have different blur radius,
but it must be that "Exclusion blend" that makes the noise look smoother than what I can achieve.
Maybe not possible in CSM.
By modifying your noise bitmap a little, I got a little closer to the look I want, only good for certain situations though.

That's interesting that you got the noise to show up as RGB glass color layer.

Bye MHG.

Yeah It's sad about Forum being shut off.
And that Fluent Design Stuff is too advanced to replicate in our situation, IMO.

Also, If anyone like to add noise to taskbar, you can do that in Taskbar Section of CS Settings.
1] Add following attachment as texture.
2] Change color to your liking. More Prominent on Lighter colors (eg. White).
3] Set Glass Transparency to 50.

Hey, you know what? I didn't even think about noise on the taskbar,
for I was using Win 10 default taskbar with noise built in.
I want to play with the taskbar image now too, but later today.

Your taskbar image looks better on my computer with taskbar settings on tile, instead of stretching.

I put the black matching noise taskbar image at top of the post.

The only other experiment I did was have some noise on the taskbar for regular color.

Taskbar image below. Similar to yours, but instead of white rgb, I used grey RGB


Taskbar tab
-127rgb 16alpha 4noise level image
-Horizontal: Tile
-Vertical: Tile
-Taskbar color: default
-Taskbar opacity: 85

Can be overdone quite easily with white RGB and high noise level 20 at near black alpha channel to get snow blizzard/ stars.
Will leave it there.
Bye.