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Phase contrast methods are most often associated with optical microscopy of weak phase specimens. Generalized phase contrast breaks away from the small phase restrictions of traditional formulations, which enables not only accurate quantitative phase measurements, but also an optimal design criterion for synthesizing specified light distributions. Light possessing user-defined intensity distributions has wide utility ranging from macroscopic profilometry [1] to wide-field optical sectioning [2] and nanoscopic imaging [3], from passive array illumination [4] to interactive optical micromanipulation [5, 6], and a wide variety of materials processing applications [8, 9, 10], among many others. GPC-based light shaping makes an interesting addition in the toolbox of techniques for light shaping. Amplitude masks are straightforward but lossy and can be dynamically reconfigured in spatial light modulator (SLM) implementations [8, 9]. The promise of lossless light redistribution makes phase-only modulation techniques particularly attractive when situations call for efficient conversion. Energy remapping using refractive and reflective approaches [11] and related lenslet array implementations [12] are efficient and robust to shift in wavelength but can achieve a limited set of patterns due to fabrication constraints and are mostly suited for static applications. Techniques using multiple beam interference [10] and special diffraction effects such as Talbot array generators [13, 14, 15] are limited to periodic patterns and have limited reconfigurability. Computer-generated diffractive approaches [16] are reconfigurable but can suffer from noise and computational load. The convenience of phase-encoding enabled by the tandem of straightforward design and availability of programmable phase-only spatial light modulators (SLM) makes GPC a highly favourable method for efficient projection of arbitrary and reconfigurable images. In this chapter, we apply the various design principles outlined in the previous chapter to show practical demonstrations of GPC-based synthesis of a wide variety of patterns including binary images, optical lattices, and arbitrary greyscale images. We also present numerical experiments to demonstrate other exciting GPC-based possibilities such as Gaussian beam shaping and achromatic light shaping and image projection. GPC exhibits robustness to wavelength in various light patterning applications, which makes for an interesting ingredient in innovative integration of multi-wavelength approaches into patterned illumination that can enable new broad-band optical applications. One area where GPC has been applied with great success is in the projection of light patterns through arbitrary-NA microscope objectives for real-time three-dimensional (3D) manipulation of microscopic particles. The substantial contribution of GPC to the promising and actively growing field of optical micromanipulation merits greater attention and will be taken up in the next chapter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]