Achieving Aero Transparency in Coherence Mode. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GIMP or other is needed for this. The steps are: 1) Create a theme that has the same background image as that on the Mac's desktop consisting of a picture where an additional black or white bar at the top/bottom and left/right side will not be out of place in appearance. 2) Set Parallels to start in Coherence Mode, with the windows Taskbar visible, and then automatically replace the Parallels grey spoiler theme, with your matching theme. 3) Modify the size and shape of the desktop picture on the Mac's desktop, so that it covers the exact same area as that of the Windows (7 in this case) desktop as seen through the transparent Aero Windows, when in Coherence Mode. *The compromises are: you will need to manually close the Personalization window when Windows starts, you will need to remove any icons from the windows desktop as they will shine through, and Mac windows will not appear in the background of the Aero transparent windows. It will still look 100 times better. 1: Find a desktop background picture that has either a black or white background. Copy/Move it to the Windows Picture folder. Change the theme using the Personalization control panel, setting the background image to be Centred (so best if it matches the screen resolution, if not rescale it). Save the theme giving it an obvious name. 2: Change the 'Folder Options' control panel 'View' tab to show hidden files and navigate to: your home folder > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows > Themes Right click the .theme file you saved and make a shortcut of it. Start menu > All Programs, right click 'Startup' folder and select 'Explore' to open it. Drag the shortcut into the folder. Change the 'Folder Options', View tab back to hiding again and close that. On the Parallels menu go to Virtual Machine > Configure, Startup and Shutdown page, and change Startup view to 'Coherence'. Click OK. *You must decide whether or not to use the Dock area and set that as well. I suggest not using the Dock area. It's important not to change the size of the Dock ever again as that will change the position and size of the screen area used by Coherence mode. 3: You can now shut down and start up windows to view the effect so far. You will see that transparency does appear to show the Mac's background but in a different place. Now using an art program like GIMP you need to modify the Mac's background image so it matches the view of the Windows background when viewed through the window borders. Doing this will tax the machines memory already dedicated to running the VM, so it will be slow to respond (give it time to spool memory to disk). Remove any surplus windows by minimizing or closing them. Leave one Windows, window open on the screen to check transparency. *We know that the Taskbar of Windows is meant to be transparent, likewise the top menu of the Mac, so if the picture is centred by Windows it should have the same height as the native resolution of the display, but it appears from window behaviour that Parallels have chosen not to include the Mac's menu bar as part of the screen area for the background in Coherence mode. Using the Grab program (Utilities folder), capture a selection of the screen area that Coherence is using. Either do this twice once to determine the width and again to determine the height, or capture the whole area in one go. Grab's tool tip is showing co-ordinates NOT SIZE, so save and open - use the inspector to read the size. In my case the screen is 1600 x 1200, the Dock's on the left, the Taskbar's on the bottom, and the area taking width and height separately (height excluding the Mac menu bar) was: 1539 x 1179 *The final image size here was 1576 x 1182 so there was a big difference on the width required and my dimensions (by trial and error) are still slightly out. Using GIMP open the Mac (Win) desktop background and change it's size to match the Coherence screen area size, plus a bit more width. Preserve the aspect ratio here by setting the smaller dimension (+2?) and allow the bigger to be what ever is calculated, and save the image. Open a new image that matches the native resolution of the screen display selecting background or foreground colours depending on if you have an image that can have blacks bars or white to fill the offset. Increase the scale of the view to about 80% and make the window bigger to see the borders around the canvas. Go back to the first image and Select > All, Copy. Move to the other window and select Edit > Paste Into. Select a Move tool to be able to move this area with the mouse and move it away from where the Dock would be on your screen. *The image needs to move further away from the dock area than expected and in my case with the Dock on the left the smaller picture overhung the right edge of the canvas. Click outside this selected area to anchor the image (where you think is best). Save the image again as Fin1.bmp (say) to the Pictures folder. Set the image as the Mac's background, minimising all but the Windows, window. It will need adjustment here (set aside a whole afternoon)! Go back to GIMP by unminimising the window you last saved. Undo anchoring the image and then move it slightly (up is down and left is right, bigger is small and visa versa). Re-anchor, save as Fin2.bmp and try that one. Keep doing this untill the error between the positioning of both is minimal. AND…. It works (twist it's arm, poke it's eye out, and Hey Presto transparency by deception)!
