brad (or anyone else in the know), how does WB's cutom color work?

I think they take the skin... and make it white... then any color can be put on top that... the skin has to have white graphics though to work... I may be wrong though

Actually its quite a bit more complex than that!

It is a wonderful feature though and the forced colouring feature added to WB 3.4 improved it even more.

Neil is correct, of course You have to make a mask image for everything you want to have a custom color. Check out some of those images in a custom color skin and you'll see what I mean.

you guys are so smart

Most of my skins are colorizable and so far I've just used skinstudio to generate the masks. Then I decided to make a skin where color is the main feature, and I wanted the user to be able to make that color anything they wanted, so I experimented a little to find out exactly what happens (I've never seen it explained anywhere), and this is what I found:

1. The mask determines how much color gets applied:

White = full color,
Black = no color

2. The mask also determines how much of the underlying bitmap shows through:

White = opaque,
Black = transparent.

So.

1. For full colorization both the mask and the bitmap should be black.
2. For a blacker color the mask should be grey and the bitmap should be black.
3. For a whiter color the mask should be grey and the bitmap should be white.

Easy really

Doh. Spot the deliberate mistake:

1. For full colorization the mask should be white. The bitmap could be anything you like!

Thanx Judge........ that's some very handy info!

This is actually great info if it does what I think it does. I'm currently working on a theme/skin that I would like in four different colors. Instead of making new graphics for each color I could instead use 'masking'? Is this correct? If so, where can I read up for more info on this?

Thanks!

I too have been making a skin, and i've found that when I want to know how to do something... I check out a tutorial by one of my favorite skinners... Aleksyandr.... he has a tutorial that most likely explains how to do this www.aleksyandr.com

http://www.aleksyandr.com

Thanks a bunch for the link

not a prob