Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

Layers snaps your entire Mac desktop as a Photoshop file

All of your desktop is a Photoshop file and all its components are merely …

Layers is a new utility that can capture your entire desktop—including every application window, menubar item, and desktop icon—in a Photoshop file or a variety of other formats that are ripe for hacking and compositing. It's a screen capture tool on steroids for those who cannot live by Mac OS X's Grab app alone.

Layers contains two useful tools, the most prominent being its screenshot utility that captures every element displayed on your desktop. You can chose to save this snap as a layered Photoshop file, a composite PNG, or separate image files for the ultimate in tinkering. The Photoshop file is truly impressive, as onscreen elements are organized as separate layers in folders such as Main Menu (the menubar), Dock, Desktop, and Applications. Once in Photoshop, each component's visibility can be selectively toggled, right down to a specific menubar item, desktop icon, or even the Leopard Dock's controversial shadow.

The sheer number of visible components that Layers captures is really impressive, although there are some limits. Dock icons, for example, are not captured separately, and (perhaps this is expecting too much) neither are browser tabs.


The second tool that Layers provides is an Inspector that allows the user to snap each component by itself. While some screen utilities, such as Skitch and Mac OS X's built-in tools, allow for snapping individual windows, Layers' Inspector allows for singling out, say, one specific menubar item or an icon on the desktop. A handful of customizations allow for including drop shadows or ditching any kind of background behind icons.

Other useful features, such as customizable keyboard shortcuts, support for multiple displays, and a menubar item for invoking Layers' various tools make this a really useful app. Layers is a Universal Binary that requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and licenses have a "launch promotion" price of $15. There is no word on how much that price will increase or when.

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