Similarly, creating the actual skin and using those graphics requires a powerful yet user friendly program. This exists in the form of SkinStudio. You can download it at http://www.skinstudio.net.

SkinStudio

SkinStudio has some really crucial features that make creating skins easy. Here are some of them:

Feature 1: Starting with an existing skin. With SkinStudio, you can do a file->new from blank skin and voila, you have Luna.

Feature 2: Point and click. You can just click on the various pieces of your GUI and change them. You can drag and drop buttons around as well.

Feature 3: Up to date reference and documentation. Under Help you can generate a reference for the latest version of WindowBlinds which is quite handy.

Feature 4: Very well documented. Whenever you select any particular portion of a window, it will tell you in detail what it does and how it works.

Feature 5: Importing. This feature is only in SkinStudio Pro but it is a very useful feature. Especially for end users. Say you've downloaded a really cool but somewhat outdated skin because it doesn't skin all you want. But you don't want to spend the time to update it. Or you really like the skin you've downloaded but wished it was more like some other skin you tried out. You can combine them by importing.  Here's an example:

I'm a Star Wars fan and I downloaded Darth by Dangeruss. It's a little dated though. See how it has older looking scrollbars and MDI windows? It also doesn't have a Windows XP Start bar. Not to mention that it stretches its borders instead of tiles (always tile when you can, stretching makes a skin much slower). Within 3 minutes I can update this skin with  SkinStudio. I'll import parts from XPCharcoal and click on the Stretch attributes to toggle them to tile.

And voila, I now have "Darth2002" for my personal use (I couldn't upload this skin because I'm using other people's materials).

Feature 6: GUI Widgets. The problem with importing from other skins is that you can't use them in your skins that you upload since that is called "ripping" (it is unethical to use other people's artistic work without their permission). However, SkinStudio Pro also comes with GUI Widgets. These are are pieces of skins that you can use in your own skins - permission is already granted. Stardock will be greatly increasing the number of widgets available shortly.

Don't want to create all those parts? Use the GUI widgets and bring them into your skin.

Feature 7: Easy to Control Color and fonts. We didn't even touch into the notepad example trying to add colors and fonts. It's a nasty business with notepad because of all the values. SkinStudio hides that complexity letting you pick fonts and colors like you would from a drawing package.

Feature 8: Turn a mockup into a skin. You can literally draw up your interface in Photoshop and save it as a bitmap. Then you can just import that as a template and select the parts you want. It's still a little too hard to use this on the frames (We're working on making that easier) but for push buttons and title bar buttons where you have all those nasty states, it's really a life saver. Though overall this feature works better in theory than in practice, but it's being improved and over time will be one of the killer features - the ability to simply load up a mockup of what you want and turn it into a skin in low amounts of time.

Feature 9: Wizards Galore. SkinStudio has plenty of wizards set up to help you get started that walk you through adding the main buttons and such without too much work. 

Feature 10: Utilities. There are a ton of tools and utilities from skin error checking to tools to make creating UIS1 skins easier.

Now that you've seen what it can do, let's make a skin.

[we'll talk about that next].