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Q: Is dynamic desktop picture limited?
- Thread starter Lunder89
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I wonder how this is achieved? I would hope they they've got multiple pics taken from the same exact spot at various intervals between sunrise and dusk and maybe use gamma adjustments to get the gradual transitions between them.
A long time ago, (OS 9) days there was a really cool app called Sundial that would change your desktop background gradually based on the time of day. They had various choices for scenes (I remember one of the GG bridge in SF). I thought that was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, the software was never updated for Intel/OS X compatibility and to my knowledge there hasn't been anything similar developed by anyone else...
Until now? Really looking forward to hearing more about how this works and how subtle the transitions are.
A long time ago, (OS 9) days there was a really cool app called Sundial that would change your desktop background gradually based on the time of day. They had various choices for scenes (I remember one of the GG bridge in SF). I thought that was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, the software was never updated for Intel/OS X compatibility and to my knowledge there hasn't been anything similar developed by anyone else...
Until now? Really looking forward to hearing more about how this works and how subtle the transitions are.
The built-in Mojave dynamic wallpaper is a 114MB HEIC file. The other Mojave wallpapers are roughly 7-9MB JPGs.
Opening the HEIC in Preview, Photoshop or FCPX just shows the 'Day' view. I assume the other versions are somewhere in the file but I have no idea how to access them.
Opening the HEIC in Preview, Photoshop or FCPX just shows the 'Day' view. I assume the other versions are somewhere in the file but I have no idea how to access them.
Not directly related to this, but does anyone know, where to find wallpapers that are the same just shot by a different time (maybe just morning, afternoon, evening and night?). Looking for something like that but didn't found something like that in a good quality...
If someone is looking for that, give this a try https://imgur.com/a/8XI6jy0/layout/grid - that are the original ones...
They use a feature of the HEIF format called Picture Track (pict) and is essentially a sequence of individual images, there you can set the timings and a wide array of other settings to create a slideshow. Unfortunately I don't know of any good editors which support some or all of the extra HEIF features.
Ok, so when I have time I will try to install mp4box and create my own dynamic wallpaper. The dynamic wallpaper is a fairly straightforward tiled image sequence of 16 images. It does contain a XMP metadata with a custom field called "apple_desktop:solar". It contains a binary plist file in base64, and the descrambled plist looks like this:
I guess si means sequence of images, and i = image index, z = some timing value, a = some other timing value, and o may refer to whether the image will run during light or dark mode. So it should be fairly easy to implement this back into the XMP and then into the custom HEIC.
Code:
{
si = (
{
i = 0;
z = 270.9334057827345;
a = -0.3427528387535028;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 1;
z = 81.77588714480999;
a = -10.23975864472505;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 2;
z = 86.33545030477751;
a = -4.247734408075456;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 3;
z = 90.81267037496195;
a = 1.389086633100843;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 4;
z = 95.30740958876589;
a = 7.167168970526129;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 5;
z = 99.92062963268938;
a = 13.08619419164163;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 6;
z = 129.1865220819196;
a = 40.41563946490428;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 7;
z = 182.2330942549791;
a = 53.43347266172774;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 8;
z = 233.5515919580959;
a = 38.79312820063863;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 9;
z = 261.8715904657666;
a = 11.08942317126588;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 10;
z = 266.4432737071051;
a = 5.184575323673625;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 11;
z = 275.4420453669525;
a = -6.248309374122789;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 12;
z = 280.0703158940117;
a = -12.20770735214888;
o = 1;
},
{
i = 13;
z = 309.4185731874514;
a = -39.48933951993012;
o = 0;
},
{
i = 14;
z = 2.175096553867547;
a = -52.75318137879935;
o = 0;
},
{
i = 15;
z = 53.50908581251309;
a = -38.04743388682423;
o = 0;
},
);
}