Help in changing Skins

[Jigen271]

Hi there guys.  Barcrest I really liked your Eliminator skin.  I took the liberty of (as folks in this forum recommend) futzing with it in the skintool and photoshop to cut down on the learning curve for the skintool.  I changed the color balance of all of the bitmaps and JPEGs and changed the background color around the album art and track list background and booted again to see what I had.  I was happy with the look of the skin as I did a little bit of NEON stuff in photoshop, but I lost text in for the track list and such (I assume that this is because the text is black on a black background).  How do I change the text color in the track list?  Also I was looking at the text boxes above (or below, not sure which right now as I am not looking at it) the Album art and it looked really good for what barcrest did, but with some of the changes I made I thought that the boxes would look a little better with a rounded look.  How do I go about doing this?  Finally, I had a problem running this skin, without my changes, in full screen, it kinda got cut off.  How do I fix this problem.  I know that this is a bit much to dump on all of you at one time, but thanks ahead of time for help in this matter, and I also apologize ahead of time for the pain in the butt I am likely to become (heh heh, hope not.)

Adam

[Barcrest]

Ok i assume you are using the V3 demo right? Anyway, to change any colours you select the item and then change the colour in the tools window, bottom right. You can set the forecolour and back colour of the labels. (Only forecolor is used on most labels as they are transparent). If you stuffed up part of the skin you should be able to copy the associated ini file back into it's folder from the original skin.... I think the tracklisting screen is called tracklisting.ini off the top of my head.

To make the labels rounded you'll have to perform a trick and create rounded boxes on the back images and place the labels over those maching the back colour. (Back colour isn't a worry if they are transparent).

I normally copy the skin i want to work on and rename it somthing else. As you have probably gathered i am no graphics wiz and i use M$ Paint hence things are not great.

hope that helps with some of your questions.

[Jigen271]

Barcrest, thanks for the quick reply and the help.  I really appreciate it.  I have another problem.  When I save my changes to your skin in the skin editor and reboot it doesn't keep the settings that I saved for album view.  Am I doing something incorrect?  Thanks again.

Adam

[Barcrest]

The album view you have to save the COV file. There is a seperate button for that. It was done this way so you can have different album views for the same skin.

[Jigen271]

Wonderful!!  Thanks again for the quick reply.  I am a little slow in replying because I live in Japan.  Where is the button to save the COV file?  I looked around for it but was not able to find it.  Thanks again.  After I finish fiddeling with your skin, I was thinking about making a few skins of my own in the style of a bubbler juke with animated gifs for the bubbler tubes on the sides and top of the juke.  I am pretty good with photoshop.  If they turn out good enough (meaning I am happy with my work), what colors are you looking for?

Adam 

[casper]

There you go mate the save cover file button.

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[Jigen271]

Thanks guys!  That was much more obvious than I thought it would be.  The skin tool was a little more daunting at first than I thought it would be, now that I have futzed with it for a while, I am beginning to get a handle on things.  Can I post screen shots of my progress even though it's not an original skin, or should I wait until I bang out my own?

Adam

[Barcrest]

No feel free to share what you have been working on, it's fine...

[jacktucky]

Thanks guys!  That was much more obvious than I thought it would be.  The skin tool was a little more daunting at first than I thought it would be, now that I have futzed with it for a while, I am beginning to get a handle on things.  Can I post screen shots of my progress even though it's not an original skin, or should I wait until I bang out my own?

Adam

Glad you're getting used to it!  Post pics!

=J

[Barcrest]

Yeah post up some pics..