Draw white shadow underneath menubar icon

[KelseyHigham]

The text is fine, but the icon is missing it!

[codler]

Why is it needed? Have you customized your menubar or? The text don't have white shadow.

Could you tell me some more details like what computer you have and a screenshot of how it look now?

[KelseyHigham]

I haven't customized my menubar at all; this is all with the default OS X theme.

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Every item in the OS X menubar has a faint white shadow underneath, to make it look like all the text and icons are indented.

It's clearer with a black desktop background: http://cl.ly/image/2x1v1J2i1x0B/o

And even clearer when you take a transparent screenshot of SystemUIServer: http://cl.ly/image/353o0Q0i1S3P/o

And here's a screenshot of Battery Time Remaining — with a shadow under the text, but not under the icon: http://cl.ly/image/2u0K2Q1R2p0F/o

The white shadows are at 45% opacity, and the black icons/text are at 90% opacity. So an easy way to generate the icon is to create a 50% opacity white shadow, put it underneath the black icon, merge the two, and reduce the opacity of the merged image to 90%.

(If you don't merge the images before decreasing the opacity, the white shadow will shine through the transparent black icon, and then the resulting icon will be gray rather than black.)

[codler]

oh ok, I didnt know or see that every icon had a white shadow underneath, but now I know. It is so small :P

Hm, I have looked around on how to apply this shadow and I cant find any easy way to program this. Ill try some more.

[codler]

How do you take a transparent screenshot?

[KelseyHigham]

Do Shift-Command-4, then press Space, then click on a window. (Menubar icons count as windows.)

Plenty more info here: http://take-a-screenshot.org

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Thanks @guillaume-algis and @codler!