Posts Tagged “SkinStudio”

After a long time in the making, the SkinStudio 6 tutorial is released.  This comes at a great time, especially with the GUI  Champs ‘08 right around the corner.  This tutorial guides users through the entire process of making a WindowBlinds skin starting with descriptions of the elements of a Graphical User Interface.  It then guides you through the process of how to use SkinStudio, and how to assemble the various parts of a skin to ultimately make a complete skin. 

This tutorial is aimed more at beginning users who are new to SkinStudio, or possibly thinking about creating their own skin.  SkinStudio 6 is a huge improvement over past editions, and the creation of skins is much more easier for beginners than it was in the past.  I haven’t made a full WindowBlinds skins in a while, and I was pleasantly surprised while creating this tutorial of how much better the experience was.  That’s not to say that creating a high-quality skin is easy, it still takes a lot of time planning, creating graphics, etc., but at least SkinStudio makes piecing them together much easier.

For more information about SkinStudio please visit www.skinstudio.net.  There is a free version of SkinStudio available, but this tutorial was created with the Pro version that is available for just $19.95, or a special Bundle that includes WindowBlinds for just $29.95.

Link: SkinStudio 6 Tutorial

Stardock is pleased to announce the release of SkinStudio 6.2. SkinStudio is an application that allows you to design custom visual styles for Windows Vista and Windows XP. These visual styles (skins) can then be applied using WindowBlinds. When creating a new skin you can change the complete look of Windows by changing the start button, taskbar, buttons, titlebars, and pretty much everything in between.
New features:

• WindowBlinds Layer Support.  The WindowBlinds layer system allows a skin author to provide multiple layers for a given section of a skin.  This also includes layer support for per-pixel borders and glyphs.  This opens up a whole new level of creativity for skinners.
• Skin Color Feature.  This feature allows Pro users to recolor a skin, or a specific sub-style by using the HSL sliders that is similar to coloring skins in WindowBlinds.  This will make it even easier to create sub-styles of varying colors.
• Animated "Please Wait" Support.  The Please Wait screen has always been a static image, now it’s possible to create an animation that can be seen while the Wait screen appears.
• NWA File Support.  NWA files are a way to reduce the size of animations that are used in WindowBlinds skins.  These can be used on Start Menu and "Please Wait" animations and can help save considerable memory and hard drive space.  SKS 6.2 also includes a tool to create NWA files from vertical .png/.tga image strips.

SkinStudio 6.2 is a free download with a Pro version available with additional features.