Layouts

(Not available in the Lite version)

The layouts system in Wallpaper Cycler allows you to create nice looking wallpapers on the fly. You can add a fully customizable calendar object to your desktop, you can add some text (a quote, notes, ...) to the desktop, you can combine multiple wallpapers into one, add RSS news feeds to your desktop, and much more. The possibilities are endless.

Lets start with an example of what the layouts system can do. Suppose you have the following two wallpapers in your wallpaper list (images are scaled for this help-file):

With one layout your desktop can be transformed into the following wallpaper:

In the background you see our first wallpaper. A special effect has been applied to this wallpaper so that it fades to a tinted and blurred version at the borders. In the top-left a calendar has been rendered with a grayscale effect in the background. The top-right shows a small image of another wallpaper, in this case this is a wallpaper from the same category as the big wallpaper. Last, in the lower-right corner a quote text-object is rendered. This quote changes each time the wallpaper is rendered.

Another layout might give the following result:

Again, in the background you see our first wallpaper with a fading border. Behind this wallpaper is a linear blueish gradient. In the upper-left corner is a little calendar and on the right are three smaller wallpapers which Wallpaper Cycler has automatically chosen from the same category as the big wallpaper. These three smaller wallpapers all have an elliptical fading mask applied to them.

To create and edit your layouts, you use the built-in layout editor. A powerful and easy to use feature of layout objects are effects. Effects allow you to apply effects to your wallpapers such as tint, transparency, invert, mask, grayscale, gamma correction, brightness, contrast, color keying, blur, texture, bevel, ... Learn more about effects. There is also a little tutorial available to create a simple layout.