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.

Indeed.

Hopefully you will heed the advice given and get into skinning.. it's a fine art but one.. if you pull it off.. that can be hugely rewarding.

Best of luck to you RobJK   

If you need another sponsor, I'm in.

Ok I am kind of gettinf the hang of it? I have learned on my own so far how to do the task bar and button on it. One thing i dont know is how to make it so that the buttons are not right next to eachother? I want the buttons to be spaced out a little more. Also I am useing gimp for the transparency. The tranparency doesnt show in the skin studio preview? Is that normal? I tryed to make round taskbar buttons. I set the background as black becuause I know I wouldnt be useing true black in the image. The black showed up in the skin studio preview? also is there a better way to edit these buttons? Is it possible to make each state of them Individually and then put them together in a line as they are originally? I know I will be here and at the tutorials many more times since I am haveing so much trouble with THE TASK BAR! That is one out of like a thousand parts of the skin! Anyways thanks for your help. It has been an aspiration to get into skinning since i stumbled upon windows blinds.

Ok kind of understand what you are saying Daiwa? If I use Transparency at the edges of the buttons and Set the margins so that the tranparency is ON the OUTSIDE of margins for them It will make space? I will try? Correct me if I am wrong. Another question for anyone who is familair with Project Dogwaffle? Not the best program but as Default it saves the images as tga or the second option is bmp? It also has alpha options. I use the alpha to protect the other parts of the image i dont want to color on? I like to use dogwaffle becuase of the Brush. You can shade things easily by setting the bias of the brush to a lower number. If I want to make a taskbar image It can be done by makeing a square af any color, using the Line tool with white as the color cell bias low and the color transparency Low. It makes a perfect shine on the image and It looks rounded. I can then do the same with a darker color or black to ad lowlights. Sorry I got a little sidetracked. My question is this... Dogwaffle has alpha channels and Options for transparency in the colors you are useing. I am just wondering If anyone knows how to make the background transparent on dogwaffle? They may already be But it doesnt show that checkered backgroundl like on other image editing programs with alpha? If anyone Uses DOGWAFFLE Please HELP! It is my image program of choice. (for certian things?) It is easy for me to use it but I dont want to have to make an Image with it and then open It agian with gimp for transparency? Thanks so much!

Ok Daiwa I tryed the spaceing for the button thing. It worked. There is space and the button is the size that i want it. I am having so much trouble gettin skin studio to recognize the transparency. Here is what I am doing. I made a square in my image program the same height as my task bar image. I filled it with green becuase green wont be used in the acual button. I made the button image inside the green with the green all of the way around it. So I have the button with a green border of about 2 3 whatever pixles. Save it as .tga. Then I open it with Gimp and select by color and I select the green. Then I add alpha channel and Clear the alpha and The green part turns to checkered. I save the Image as png and it has an option to save the transparency so I checked it. There is also an Option for COmpression? I dont know what that means so I leave it alone? But when I import the image to skinstudio the transparent part is BLACK? I import as a single frame becuase it is just practice. So I though that I would try to apply it to see if it worked and the buttons showed up like the green bordered Image. With no tranparency? I think that the problem is Gimp. Is there an alternative to gimp for transparency? Or does anyone know about gimp? What am I doing wrong? It is so annoying. I will never give up till I get IT!!!I dont know what to do? Maybie I should by adobe? How much is it to jsut get Photoshop so that I can make skins?

I also Just noticed the Skin studio isnt converting the image to .tga it is still png when in skin studio?

Ok well I know that Gimp is saving the transparency. I opened the image with Icon Developer and It recognised the transparency? So i am thinking now that the problem is with skin studio? I have skin studo 5.01? I just bought object desktop so I thought I should have skin studio 6? I think I bought it right before Skin studio 6 was released so shouldnt it Update? Maybie thats why it isnt working Right? Do I have to Have 6 for it to recognise transparency? an cavan 1 thanks for your help but I cant save as png iwth dogwaffle. Only .tga or bmp and It for shure doesnt save any transparency? So I have to save it as Targa and open it with gimp and Add the transparency and then save as png?

I do know that Skinstudio6 will automatically convert a png to a tga. I'm not sure if SKS5 does or not.

It took me a fair amount of time to figure out how to enable & use transparency with PSP8. Stay patient & keep at it.

I dont know I even made an image with gimp to test it. A square 100 by 30. Added alpha chanel and Select all clear. THen inside I made a red square so that the checkared border was all the way around it and saved it as .png. IN the save options what should i have checked and unchecked? Imported to windows blinds and still showed up as black? And still png when i import it. No transparency will work? Do i have to save the skin before it shows transparency?

Ok since no one answered that. I have seen on other windows blinds skins that i opened with skin studio that they used one single taskbar image and had it streach all the way across into the start button area and into the tray area. Then they just made an image for the star button and had it over lay upon the streatched taskbar. How to do this?