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Modify the analog clock's face System
Thanks to a recent hint from murat, I have now found (by digging deeper from his starting point) where the OS X analog clock face tiffs reside. Navigate to /System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Menu Extras -> Clock.menu. Control-click on Clock.menu and choose Show Package Contents, then open Contents -> Resources, control-click on WindowClock and choose Show Package Contents. Finally, navigate into Contents -> Resources within the package. Here you will see a tiff file named Clock02.tif; this is the background for the analog clock's face. Remember: make a backup before working with this file -- drag a copy to a safe location, then drag another to your Desktop that you'll modify, for example.

In Photoshop or Graphic Converter, you can customize this clock face file. Remember that the face is transparent outside the circle. If you cut/paste artwork and flatten, this will be a problem. Instead, when I used Photoshop, I merged visible of the layer with the bottom one (the original Clock02.tif). Voila! I had my custom clockface back. I saved the file on the desktop, (Photoshop would not allow a system-level save). Then I replaced the (you did back it up, right!?) original Clock02.tif with the modified file (keep the name the same, obviously) after it asked for authentication. I logged out and back, and there was my clock. Hope this helps...

[robg adds: I played around with this, and it works -- though my lack of Photoshop skills probably meant it took more time than it should have!]
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Modify the analog clock's face
Authored by: claudio on Sep 13, '05 04:56:33PM

Yeah, thanks for this one.

As for me, I don't like the window clock's digital face. So I just renamed the the file backgroud.tif to any other name (it's inside the same folder as Clock02.tif resides and I chose the wonderful name backgroud_.tif).

If you then switch to the digital window clock, the only thing you'll see is the current time, month, day and weekday (and a nasty shadow around it all). But thanks god that "calendar-style-background" is gone - yikes :-)

Ciao,
Claudio

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- claudio



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Modify the analog clock's face
Authored by: claudio on Sep 13, '05 05:04:38PM

Just a second after I did the above, I see, that the digital window clock has a buggy interface.

If you rename the image backgroud.tif and switch to the digital window clock (you might have to switch to the menubar clock, though) move the "backgroundless" clock over a white area (of a website for example).
After doing so, wait for a minute or two and watch closer what happened. There are "gohst images" of the minutes that have passed. You can see them on a white background as it leaves the minutes "distorted" and like I said as "ghost images" on a darker background (like the standard blue background of www.macosxhints.com).

Anyways, IMHO the analog window clock is way nicer to look at.

Ciao,
Claudio

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- claudio



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Dupe?
Authored by: mister_fister666 on Sep 13, '05 05:32:23PM
Lots of this was covered in this previous hint: Add hour markers to the analog menu bar clock

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