XT Resources:(Skins)

[.jon]

A quick question about skins:

I'm almost done with one but there is one problem with the
ic_font_col where I got a very dark background on the main
board so I need a rather light font color but this font
color is also the same for the numers in the mixer comp
so I need a dark power button in order to see the numbers
properly... only that the power buttons are used for
disabling the sends/insert in the mixer and those symbols
are dark because I use light buttons where i need dark
font color for bn_font_col.. so......

I guess it wasn't a question after all..
a FR for more separate options in the skin then...

//Daniel

Nice question but yes, I agree and that's not the only place. The grid has overlap, and the leds are also main time display.

Your skin looks great, I love those colours and it's very balanced. Is that still a mock or do you have Win font antialiasing on?

Sickle, I knew that you'll want something nastier. Will make a red version, I tried with orange but that was too... something and I didn't like it. Red could work!

Thanks again everyone, nice to see you like the skin.

.jon

[Synesthesiac]

By the way, here is a draft of my Humble_Red skin:



//Daniel

me like

[ddummer]

Is that still a mock or do you have Win font antialiasing on?

So THAT is what it is!! I thought either my laptop screen
was going sour or my eyes was giving up...

see it started to happen after I messed around with the
graphic drivers after a re-install..

Anyway thanks for the tip,I'll remove it right away..

//Daniel

[.jon]

Tips for Xara users

- you can copy & paste directly from Xara as well - just right-click on your selected object, choose Create bitmap copy and copy the bitmap, click on the skin item in eXT skin editor and paste.

- use named colours instead of local colours, so you can adjust all relevant items easily

- choose pixels as page units, and adjust the grid spacing 10pix, with 10 subdivs

- enable snap to grid, only disable when required (shortcut Numpad ".") using whole-pixel measures results in sharper bitmaps

- use guidelines, Ctrl+L enables rulers and you can add guides by dragging from the rulers

- dock the layer and colour galleries. I use only 2 layers (lower is just an export background) as I always work from my older skins fully vectorised, but having the dumped bitmaps from the default skin on a lower layer made it easy to start my first skin

- slice objects with whole-pixel dimension objects, all snapped to grid, with no outline for best results. Sometimes you need to ungroup and break apart the slice results (with complex shapes).

- keeping stuff aligned and adjusting duplication distance to your liking makes working with similar objects easy. Ctrl+shift+L opens the graphical alignment dialog which I find absolutely wonderfully supergreat and fast.

- ctrl+shift+a pastes attributes (colour, transparency, line width, bevel style etc) from the last copied object.

Hope there is someone else using Xara and hope this helped, might be old news but shit happens.

sunny days,

Jon

[comxed]

Tips for Xara users
...

hmm... cool features... which xara is it? xtreme, 3d, webstyle?

[.jon]

Xtreme is the newest version of the vector app. Some people have decided to stay with Xara X1, I haven't tried those other Xara programs as they are limited to certain tasks.

It's a very nice program usability-wise, if you don't need industry compatibility with Adobe products you'll be just fine with Xara and a pdf print driver.

A beta version for Linux already exists, the devs have plans to make it the best graphics available for all platforms... with XT2 and Xara LX I'll be surely installing Debian next to XP

[ddummer]

ahhhh.... font anti aliasing de-activated...
My laptop TFT turned brand new... well besides some
flaws in the backlight.. then again 3 years with
ca 10 hours programming everyday day shouldn't
qualify my to complain any further...

//Daniel

[grymmjack]

jon, do you do all your skinning with xara xtreme alone? if so, do you have experience with vector editors like photoshop, and if so, how do you compare the workflows?

[.jon]

You mean bitmap editors? Yes, all in Xara, I've used PS mostly for batch processing of digital photos and not so much creative work.

I just love vectors, especially Xara. I do everything I can with it, so I'm far from objective as using it is sort of natural to me. You could do better with PS. One strenght of Xara is that it can handle thousands and thousands of objects without slowing down, and it is very responsive from the beginning.

Xtreme can handle PS effect plugins as well.

[ddummer]

Try it and see if you like it....



http://www.tinbrooketales.com/hosted/Humble_Red.zip

Edit: I noticed that the vertical scrollbars mid segment
became mis-aligned when you moved around a window...
This went away when I changed to tile instead of stretch
so I updated the zip incase anybody downloaded it before
this note.

//Daniel

[.jon]

Yes! I do!

I think this is one of teh bestestest so far - thanks! Excellent icons, wonderful classic colours. I like it so much I edited some colours a bit to my tastes, I think I'll use this for some time.

[robenestobenz]

ddummer: I really love the style of your skin, but somehow don't get on so well with the shade of red. It's got a lovely vintage look, though. Kinda reminds me of some of 1940's meters and dials.

[insane]

thanks!! don't know how you guys have patience to do this, but im glad you have! (i always give up) .
The icons are very good , i also changed the main colors , but only cus remind me of the default skin.




.

[Shifrin]

Fantastic Daniel

Many thanks for this!

Shif.

[Mikael Adle]

Great skin Daniel.