RobJK, I'm not a skinner, but the link takes you to WinCustomize Wiki and the Skins Studio page. Look down towards the bottom of the page you should see some tutorials. Hope this helps or atleast gets you start until a skinner comes by.

WWW Link

First thing I'd recommend is that you spend some time examining some already-made skins in SkinStudio. This will familiarize you with the types of image formats & typical image sizes for the various GUI elements. Be patient - there are lots of individual images that make up a complete skin & it takes some time to soak it all in and understand how they all fit together. Just to make it easier for us, skins with perpixel (transparent) borders fit together slightly differently than skins using standard borders.

When you're ready to take a first stab at skinning, load a skin in SkinStudio, select File/Save As and save it as any name you like (maybe TestSkin or something similar). Then you can load individual images from the TestSkin folder into a graphics editor such as Paint.NET, PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro and modify or replace the images as you wish. It will take a lot of trial and error to understand how everything fits together, but your patience will be rewarded.

As for transparency, you should use an image editor that can create images with alpha-channel transparency (all the above will do so; although you can make a complete skin without any transparency using MSPaint & nothing but .bmp images, some GUI elements will display better if transparency &/or translucency are used) - you may also have to spend some time with the image editor learning how to create images with transparency, which also takes a bit of trial and error when first starting out.

There appears to me to be no right or wrong way to approach skinning when you first start out - the key thing is to start out.

Good luck. Come back with more questions. There will be many amateur & professional skinners hanging out here to help you along the way.

Skinning.net tutorials

skinartistry.com has tutorials as well

The image you are working with needs to be saved in .png format with alpha-channel transparency (or directly to .tga format with alpha-channel trans if your image editor supports it). If you use .png format, you can use the import function in SkinStudio and it will automatically convert the .png to .tga format on the fly. I don't use Gimp so I'm not familiar with how you set the alpha-channel transparency for .png's in that app.

If you use some transparent pixels on either side of the taskbar button, then set the sizing margins inside the actual visible button border, you'll end up with space between buttons. How many transparent pixels you use will determine the amount of space between buttons.

It is certainly reasonable to start with a single button image, make several versions, one for each different state, then combine them left to right in the correct order in a single image.

Keep working at it and keep the questions coming, Rob.

You got it.

OH and when I save the original image that I made in dogwaffle there is an option to save as 8 bit color 8 bit greyscale 24 bit color or 32 bit color plus alpha? If it matters what to save as?

This is what you should save png as.

Rob, I use GIMP for everything. When you make your image, you don't have to make a border of green around it. It sounds like you are not deleting the background layer....Get rid of it!! Right click on the background layer and choose delete. Then whatever you make will have a transparent background. Finish your image and save it as .png.

If you want transparency around the button, just leave a space around it(no background).

You do not need to put it into Skinstudio to make it a .tga until you have it done. Although you can edit a tga file, it's not necessary to have it as a tga just to remove the background.

SKS5 definitely automatically converts .png's to .tga's when you import them.

I do I push clear. Which is delte. I make the green so that i can select by color in gimp. there will be no green in the image so it will be a perfect selection around the image i want to show. I can use gimp to make the images? I am not good with gimp at all. Maybie i could? Does gimp have a brush that you can change the bias on? And a tool for makeing line straight or curved?

Ok I am so sorry no one get mad? I fugured it out. It was becuase I didnt have translucency or transparency checked? I was reading on how to make a start menu and i found that out?> Next question? Can someone help me make a start button that is above the taskbar like the vista start button and all of the other buttons on other windows blinds skins. I just want a round button? I am just makeing a proctice skin but I want to know how to do this for future? I am slowly but shurely getting it. I dont know how to code anything so if that is part of it keep in mind it is ALL new to me? I have never skinned anything. I have only made an object dock background? And it was tiles? so i know nothing! Sorry guys and Thank you all so so so much for your help and patience.

Robby

The StartButton and SysTray images will overlay the Taskbar automatically. The Taskbar image can be either stretched or tiled to fill from left screen border to right screen border, which is a setting in SkinStudio for the Taskbar image - in 'Painting options.'

Make sense?