'How to Survive Skin Studio' seeking opinions.

I'd be interested in having a resource such as this. Keep thinking about trying a WB but havent gotten around to it yet.

Excellent idea. I could have used something like this on my first blind. If you get all the tips together, you could post them in the Wiki!   

First tip....window frames need to be saved as 24 bit bitmaps, NOT 32 bit. If you save them as 32 bit, magic pink will show on the skin.

Is that along the lines of what you were looking for?

Most of my knowledge is from SKS5...which is fast becoming irrelevant.  

A thread or Wiki with links to threads that contain valueable info might be handy.

Like this...All Progs Arrow trick WWW Link

This doesnt apply to SKS directly but a valuable tip nevertheless.

When ur making rectangles, shapes, in PS for use in a WB.. say a frame..or something.. Zoom in to 1600% in Photoshop and make SURE your edges are pixel perfect by dragging the transform controls for the shape.

One of the main problems I see with WB images is a blurryness on shape edges.. doing this will solve that.

Thanks for comments.

I'm a great fan of the Wiki and happy to feed in to it as felt useful. I thought this was more likely to compliment work that was in the Wiki, rather than duplicate it.

@zakai1369 - Thanks for getting it started.

@ Xiamdi- Thanks for joining in. Any tip is welcome. If it's something you feel useful then offer it up - and I'll collate it.

@ I.R.- I'm not sure how fast SS5 will become redundant? I'm happy to work with it for now though. As long as any tip that's version specific is clearly labelled as such.

I thought about the thread idea. I think it's a great way of presenting and asking for tips as a channel for collation, but on it's own would soon lose shape if it became comprehensive - and so be less accessible. I'd expected to be a useful resource it will need to be modular, amendable and navigable.

The 'All Progs Arrow trick' is a great example of how welcome such a tip can be.

@ vStyler- A very welcome offering, thanks.


Any other thoughts, observations about how best to shape such a thing, if it's wanted?

Alternate Setting: Boxxi just put a start menu template on another thread WWW Link that you may want to add here.

Cheers zakai - I've seen that and anything that helps with focus is very welcome. As it goes, this thread was more about checking out the value of the project.

I'll start a fresh thread for collecting and requesting tips... that I will then collate and make available. Established skinners like Boxxi, are considered very welcome contributors.

It feels a bit two-faced to do it without showing willing to open SkinStudio myself, so I'm working on a project that goes hand in glove with this one and will involve an open invitation for anyone that wants to, to build a basic WindowBlind themselves. I'm intending this to be an ongoing thread, that will focus more on the mechanics than the art, and will hopefully raise some real time issues and feed into the tips & tricks doc.

I'm just concentrating on developing a theme at the moment for the thread.

AS, why create a PDF?  Why not post to the wiki?
A PDF seems at least redundant or at most counter-productive to other efforts.

Hi Zubaz,

It's like I said earlier on - I think if it has any use, then it has to be modular, navigable and amendable.

I have no idea how many tips/workarounds there are out there. If there are enough to make doing it worthwhile, then a thread would definitely struggle to achieve that.

The Wiki could do it, if it presented as an updatable index that linked to the tips/workarounds.

It's just easier for me initially to compile them in a more structured format and see what shape it takes.

Good enough for me.