Creating a skin

[Norman Marshall]

To all you skin creators,
                                Im very interested in making my own skins so ive started playing with the skin tool and moving things around (its now a lot easier with barry's dummy guide, Well done barry) Now im getting the hang of the skin tool i want to make my own skins, Can some one tell me what software i need to create the buttons and stuff, What format they should be saved as e.g jpeg,mpeg,bmp,gif ect ect. All help appreciated                         

[coffee]

I hope you will share these skins. LOL
Anyway, the buttons have to be in GIF format and the backgrounds in JPG. You can just check any of the latest skins. You should see what was used in them.
Photoshop is a good platform to create these images.

[Norman Marshall]

Thanks Coffee
                   And yes i do have intentions of sharing.

[Barcrest]

If you don't have photoshop you can make buttons using GIMP, it's like photoshop but free and there are tutorials how to make skins on the web

[Norman Marshall]

My hat goes of to all you skin makers and software developers, i played around with photoshop last night and i took some gettin use to but i got there in the end (i think)

[Norman Marshall]

Do i have to create a new layer for every item of the skin? e.g the alphabet has 26 letters so is that 26 different layers? The selection screen has 12 album covers so is that 12 different layers and so on, One more thing is how do i get the album cover all the same size and equally spaced? Once again thanks in advance.

[Barcrest]

You need to make each button individually not on a seperate layer. The button can be made up of many layers as you will be saving it out as GIF for use in freebox where all the layers will be merged into one flat image.

[Norman Marshall]

Can someone tell me how to make a new null screen, i seem to be having problems, i thaught i made one but when i start etouch the old null screen and the A,B,C's appear

[Barcrest]

I assume you mean album view, you need to save out the cov file.

[Norman Marshall]

Yep i meant the album veiw, im not to sure what you mean by 'saving out the cov file' barry? im afraid as far as writing code for software is concerned then im an absalute novice.

[coffee]

If you see a b c's try the following.

If you open the skintool, go to the "file controls/settings" window. Look for "jump to letter" near the bottom of the window. In the drop down menu you will have "buttons on album screen" selected.
Now try a different option in that menu and see what it does.

[Norman Marshall]

Hi all,
        Im in need of some more assistance, Can someone please tell how you get all the box's the same size, If you take a look at the page load playlist image and all the other images that have boxes in you will see they are all the same size and the boxes i make seem to be different sizes, ive tried using photoshop 7, photoshop cs5 and coreldraw x5 and i just cant get me boxes the same size, Now i am no software developer and no computer programmer so if you could explain in laymens terms would be fantastic. What does everyone think of a red and white retro style skin?

 

[Hitbig]

Seems a good idea.
any preliminary screenshot??

[Barcrest]

Hi all,
        Im in need of some more assistance, Can someone please tell how you get all the box's the same size, If you take a look at the page load playlist image and all the other images that have boxes in you will see they are all the same size and the boxes i make seem to be different sizes, ive tried using photoshop 7, photoshop cs5 and coreldraw x5 and i just cant get me boxes the same size, Now i am no software developer and no computer programmer so if you could explain in laymens terms would be fantastic. What does everyone think of a red and white retro style skin?

 

If you are refering to things like the frame around the ablum covers i would make one and copy it to other parts of the screen i want it. That would keep them all the same size. If you are refering to elements of the skin tool like a button you just click one and select make all same size. As for the skin sounds good, be nice to see a screenshot of what you are doing.

[Norman Marshall]

Im working on a screenshots now, will post as soon as they are done