I'm not a skinner but I was a systems analyst for software programming optimization (rewriting programs to be smaller, faster and more user friendly) for a number of years so I have some appreciation of the effort involved in producing a master skin. Whew, that was a mouthful. I have bought several master skins and I enjoy the aesthetics but to be fair, only one master skin was without significant problems. The most common problem involves text and background color choices. Twice I suggested the text of something was hard to read and was lambasted about "the skinner has made personal choices as to colors and white on white or black on black IS the design. OK, it's their creation but the buyer should have a right to a refund, for X number of days, in a simple straightforward manner. If the skinner wants a formal "letter of destruction", that's fine too.

Really I applaud the master skinners but let's be fair to the buyers as well. 

You could always change the fonts/text colors to your liking via SkinStudio, I do it all the time.

And whatever you do for god sake don't use comic sans!

Am I the only person who understood where the OP was coming from?

Dunno that I agree with it...or the need to segregate payware vs freeware skins....

....but I know where he's coming from....

I understand where he's coming from, I also understand where he's going. But Masters have worked hard to become Masters, honing skills, giving years of work away for free, not to mention being great assets to the community. They deserve to upload at will and have their work on the front page in the main gallery along with the rest of us.

If there was a gallery of only master skins, and they all went there, Masters wouldn't get the exposure they're entitled to, and have worked so hard for. And some of those Masters have only recently become Masters. Where is their incentive to become Masters if their work is set aside where only those seeking to pay for skins will see them? I never set out looking to pay for skins, hell, I'm a cheap skate! But when I see a real good Master Quality skin, if it is true quality, I am enticed to buy it. This would be a loss for the Masters if it were taken away.

As for free skins, yes, there are plenty, but I've seen a fair share of fairly ugly skins come through here in the past year, so I for one love seeing those master quality skins.

well I was told that the master skin program was broken, so thats why the backup of master skins, and then the release of them in consession.

and im pretty sure we were told about this? if not......my bad.

some people have this idea that master skinners must make thousands per skin.....nuh uh no way at all, my first cheque was 30 bucks....and thats not a lie. and then the bank had to convert it to australian dollars so i recieved 20 bucks .... so i wouldnt exactly call us money grubbers, far from it.  Hell go to renderosity or daz3d some time, most stuff there is over 10 bucks and can max into the 40's and even 70's.

I think the op should sit down and try to skin a windowblind, then make the icon set that goes with it, and the cursor and the rainlender and the sysmetrix, the object doc, the wallpaper, ect ect ect......its alot of work and the only thing we require is a bit of respect for our status......

and if you still dont get it, refer to my optimus prime comic!

I'm reading this from the back seat of my limo. Actually my assistant is reading it to me.

Pour me another glass of wine and read on.....

Maybe u bought u the wrong ones

I cant imagine any Master skinner saying black text on black bg was on purpose unless there was no way around it.

  A refund on something u cannot return would just lead to abuse I reckon.

Neil is slowly but surely removing any barriers to having to put up with text ending up unreadable...but it does still happen...all areas of skinning are not yet under complete control.

vStyler is correct...I cant imagine ANY master saying unreadable text was by design...sometimes its unavoidable due to the limitations of dark skin design...or just some unseen aberration of the OS.

I have often encountered places in windows where the same text color is used over light,dark and medium backgrounds...try skinning your way around that without some compromises in pure readability.

Now if all you want is nothing but lite baby blue skins and white backgrounds we gotcha covered...cant see sales being very good after the first 2 or 3 tho.

Speaking of sales...money grubbers?...geez. I am disabled...this is it for me,I'm lucky to be able to scrape out a skin here and there to make a few bucks on.NONE of them have earned what they were worth in effort to make yet.

We are at the end of the quarter and I just passed 250$...yup,I'm rolling in dough man.

So I guess you can afford that Penthouse I've been hearing about now huh! Man....some people just have all the luck!