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Thanks to a tip from Graham Brown, we have this little trick for changing the color and pattern in the MacOS X Dock. Ironically, because of the stricter file permissions in MacOS X, this edit is easier to perform when booted into MacOS 9.

There are three pdf files that are used to create the look of the dock. They can be viewed in Acrobat, and opened and edited in Photoshop.

You'll find them by following the path below. You'll need left, middle, and right.pdf.

These three files are 8x8 pixels, and can be a solid color or pattern. Below you can see which sections of the dock are represented by each pdf. Updated: The replacment file for middle doesn't have to me limited to 8x8 pixels. Larger images can produce a spectacular effect. See this dock image by Graham.

Be sure to always work on copies of the original files. To get you started, download this set of dock pdf's contributed by Graham Brown.

If you keep a sharp eye on the ResExcellence Snapshots, you may have noticed some of the MacOS X desktops have transparent Dock backgrounds. How do you do that?

Using Photoshop, create a new image one pixel by one pixel and set the contents to "transparent". Unfortunately, you can't save a transparent image as a pdf in Photoshop, so I tricked it by selecting the PDF Print Driver in the Chooser, and printed the tiny image to pdf. Under Page Setup, be sure to turn off any pdf image compression that will make the image milky instead of transparent.

Take the saved pdf file, make two copies, and rename them left.pdf, middle.pdf, and right.pdf. Follow the instructions on this previous edit to place the new files in the correct folder. What? You're too lazy to go through the trouble? Fine. Download mine.