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Windows Desktop Dimmer / Shade Are your eyes being blinded by the bright white light leaping from your screen and burning your retinas out? Yeah, so were mine. So I looked for ways to adjust this, but each thing had its limitations. - LCD brightness adjustments: Yes, this is the obvious choice. But there's two problems: The monitor emits a high pitched noise (common with LCD dimming) In different scenarios, brighter is better (games, movies). And what a pain to constantly adjust! - Graphics Card software adjustments: Pain in the ass, often inconsistent, and might ruin contrast, wash out colors, or otherwise not give the results you want. Its even more of a pain when dealing with more than one monitor. And again - see #2 above. So what other option is there? Well, there's this novel idea of using a desktop dimmer 'window' - basically a click-through full-screen GUI that is fully transparent - thus altering the screen colors. I got this idea from this Android app called 'Screen Filter'. I had explored the idea with this very basic test code: ; Styles: Basic: WS_POPUP (0x80000000), Extended: WS_EX_NOACTIVATE 0x08000000, ; $WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW (0x80) + $WS_EX_TOPMOST (0x8)? + $WS_EX_TRANSPARENT (click-through) $hGUI=GUICreate("",@DesktopWidth,@DesktopHeight,0,0,0x80000000,0x08000080 + 0x20) WinSetTrans($hGUI, "", 110) WinSetOnTop($hGUI, "", 1) GUISetBkColor(0x141414) WinSetState($hGUI, "", @SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE) Sleep(5000)This worked well when put inside a 'real' AutoIt script. However, there was a constant issue revolving around windows stealing the top-most attribute, thus causing them to hover 'above' the desktop shade. So (as you'll see from the posts below), we created workarounds by resetting the top-most flag. But that made things a bit, well, ugly. A number of people tried to come up with methods that tried to solve this problem - and really, its an interesting read, so check out the posts that follow. The thing is, everybody ran into the same losing-topmost status problem.. UNTIL, that is, lorenkinzel came in and> posted a script that surprised us all Dimmer Control / Tray Menu Turns out one easy API call was all it took to adjust the screen brightness. No fancy Desktop Shade GUI's were needed. So, KaFu took it one step further by developing a simple GUI, and I made some adjustments (see above pics), implemented some fixes, and the rest is history. We now have a nice 'Windows Desktop Dimmer' program that I find to be a must-have addition to my Windows toolbox. Ah, and I should mention the neat '>Windows Focus' GUI that was developed by KaFu in response to my '>Active Window Dimmer' script. Mine simply dimmed the active window, while KaFu's dimmed everything BUT the active window. This creates a cool movie-theater or focus-writer effect that I find actually compliments the Windows Dimmer. *UPDATE: See '>Spotlight + Focus GUI' script for some new eyestrain-relieving experiments! And check out RedShiftGUI for even better ideas for eyestrain relief! So, with all that said, I might as well post the whole package of scripts together as one ZIP. Use just the Windows Dimmer, or mix together different scripts for some funky effects! (see the attachment below) Oh, one more thing, just to clear up the context of post #2: it had to do with a question I had regarding any theories or common practices used to adjust brightness without losing contrast or details. WindowsDimmerShadeAndFocus.zip [previous downloads: 137] Changelog: 2013-05-14 + Added _GraphicsIsGammaRampSupported() function which checks if the graphics device supports Gamma Ramps (used by WindowsDimmer.au3). + Small speedup of DLLCalls

TinyColorCatcher v1.0.4.4 Yet another small tool to know the value of color codes. A magnifier x4 to x32 will help you to see precise pixel color. A history of colors store your copied colors and you can delete them with a left click.Icon. Added the possibility to adapt mouse speed to Zoom Level for an easy color capture. Added Shades Tab for those who want edit and find the exact shade they want. After you have copied a color, just left click on "Preview" ( in Shades Tab ) for paste it. Intensity of shades can be set by 3 radios and you can change shades gradient direction by left click on "Shades" label (at the left of radios group). Sliders and Inputs can help you to adjust pasted color in preview. Added Colors Chart with color's names. For catch any color on Tabs, same principe as magnifier : Press Middle mouse button or F12 for copy color value ( located under your cursor ) to clipboard. Your settings are saved to registry. As usual external files are downloaded at first execution.( Run as administrator the first time ) Press middle mouse button or F12 ( for TouchPad User ) for copy color value ( located under your cursor ) to Clipboard. Previous Downloads : 100 Update of 25 June 2013 Source : TinyColorCatcher v1.0.4.4.au3 Executable : TinyColorCatcher.exe.html (Once this html file downloaded, double click on it for start the download) Will be added to the next version of >SciTE Hopper. Hope you'll find it handy !