It seems like my Now Playing Bar settings are staying different among all my layouts - which is what I want. I thought I had placed them in the Main Panel from the start, but maybe I had some of them in the Bottom Panel and that's why the changes would persist even when I changed to another layout. Scratch that as a request.
Let me make artwork request make a little more sense. Two options, one to enable/disable the album artwork box on the left-hand side and another to enable/disable all the track's artwork options in smaller boxes across the top bar, similarly to the Main Panel option. If both options are disabled, the bar's background color would default to the skin's primary color. If the left-hand artwork option were selected and the top bar artwork option disabled, the Now Playing Bar would function as it does currently. If the left-hand artwork option were disabled, while the top bar artwork option were enabled, the bar background colors could be derived from the selected artwork (ala the Main Panel option.) If both options were enabled, selecting an image from the top bar would change the image in the left-hand box (ala right-clicking and selecting an image.)