Lightstar is correct saying it may be a SM sizing issue.

Also just for the heck of it, Change the amount of programs you show on the left side. Some people like that many but most don't use that amount. If you go 5 or 6 programs less it just may work fine. Will be watching to see if their is another suggestion for this situation.

Thanks for the info Lightstar and Dave. I do have aa habit of adding about 20-30 pixels to the bottom of the places list after I upload a skin, That way, it aligns fine when applied to my machine. I've tried reducing the number of recent programs being displayed and reducing the amount of programs showing in the places section also but to no avail.

You'll notice that each of my first two skins use seperate windows for the left and right side due to this very problem.

It's amazing that all the skins I download work fine and the skins I've posted align right also but for some reason, Stardock products just don't like my machine. Skin Studio isn't the only porgram I've had problems with.

Doc Wilson... your not supposed to add extra pixels to the bottom of the places list so it "fits" when its applied in skin studio.

you are supposed to make your startmenu as ONE WHOLE PIECE and then cut it up CORRECTLY AND CAREFULLY into the seperate parts for

the startmenu.

userpane, places list, programs list. ect.

you obviously need help with either making the startmenu or cutting it properly so it fits.

if you want you can send me your wba, if you send me a pm here ill give you my email address

Obviously something was altered between the two occasions.

Thanks Doortech fror the information, all this time I thought the height for the all programs section was 30 pixels and have been sizing accordingly. I know I used to keep my desktop fonts at 125% so I willl recheck t5hat too. At least this gives me a starting point for re-cutting my current Start menu. Please never take offense when providing possibilities as you never know what will turn on that lightbulb in my head. Now I have some guides to re-set in Photoshop so I can re-cut my start menu again.

As I said before, in my newbieness, I did some compensating in getting my start menu to line up on previous projects.

I just had to bring this continuing problem up out of frustration in having my SKS preview image lining up but not applying properly when the skin was installed.

Thanks again.

You are very welcome Doc, glad it helped. If you are cutting a start menu with a specific pattern, especially a horizontal stripe or border, the image needs to be cut precise , meaning you should not have to paint margins. If it was just a solid color, would not be important, but to line things up, cutting is key.Also, do not feel bad, I did not even know an all programs section was in a skin until Vamps helped me! Cut all my earlier skins wrong. Still using 3D blues by the way, excellent skin, even with the start menu, cause it works on my pc!. Check that start button on 3d blues also, I do not know if you saw my comment on the skin, but just slightly off on the alignment. Think it was the fourth image had to be shifted, not sure though. If you have trouble lining up transparent images, try putting in an extra layer while you are working on the image, size a solid block to the frame size and place it behind the layers you are aligning, and use it for reference. works well to line up shadowed images, , just count pixel movement from the left or right edge, as you shift each image,of the solid image. Hope that makes sense, if not maybe someone else has a better method. Generally you can just figure out which image is off and shift a bit left or right , that works for me usually.Trial and error, only way to learn. Look forward to your next skin, DT1

Don't forget to apologize to stardock! It likes your pc, just not your cut and your large text.LOL. Picking on ya Doc.

Hey Doortech, I just posted the above comment and didn't even see that you'd written again.

I thank you very much for pointing out the start button images that wern't positioned right. I did take it down right away and corrected the problem. I'm quite embarrased that I overlooked that placement when making the skin. My only defense is that those darn inner shape layers were giving me fits because I had no way of painting them so the highlights and shadows didn't stretch. I liked the overall design effect and believe it or not, that whole skin design came from watching a you tube video on creating a company logo. I just fell in love with the inner color layer and decided it had to become a skin.

When i can, I actually use the original graphics as a background layer to line up my images such as taskbar buttons. This start button just happened to be bigger than the original and I completely spaced when it came to checking the spacing using skin studio's painting section. On my previous skin, I got brave and did a 4 frame start button animation but the extra images didn't show up in the painting section and aligning them gave me fits for over an hour.

Thanks again for the input and as far as appologizing to Stardock.... it'll be a cold day after the lack of support I've gotten from them. My conputer just doesn't like Stardock products and I've written tech support many times now due to Skin Studio and DesktopX not getting along with my system and it's (Very Overprotective) Security suite. My Bitdefender seees all stardock programs as intruders and I've had to put in all Stardock directories to be excluded from virus search as well as disabling parts of Bitdefender itself after it wouldn't let me save any new settings on my skins and the DesktopX Multibar I created and posted here.

I used to use Bitdefender and had no problems with Stardock apps.... I only switched to Kaspersky because BD was too slow catching up to Win 7.

BD DID deny me access to an 'innocent' Sonique download.....which was annoying. [it's an old media player [skinnable]]...

Hmmmm, after reading all this it's odd that I always make my all programs image 30 pixels in height, and don't have any real issues with it at all. Oh well, whatever works!

Yeah! The emoticons issue is fixed!

heh another skinning issue solved from us killer skinners....

do we all kick as or what???