Transparency

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 by silentrob37 | Discussion: WindowBlinds

i'm sure this question has been asked dozens of times, so i'm sorry in advance.

anyway, i'm trying to take a skin and make the startbar semi-transparent, so i opened the skin with skinstudio and go to the startbar, apply translucency and transparency, define how much, (i set it to 100), and save the skin.  then when i load the skin again and apply it, the startbar is just black.

i remember hearing a while ago that windowblinds runs off of two bitmaps, one as a regular bmp and another to define the transparent areas, as a mask.  is that what i'm missing?  if so how do i apply it?

as a side note, i also took a skin and tried to just recolor the start button so i took it and edited it in photoshop, then pasted the entire thing (all the frames) back in and saved the skin as a subskin, but the start button wouldn't show up.  i don't know what's going on there...?

can anyone help?

4 Reply 3 Referrals
Bebi Bulma
Reply #1 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 8:25 PM
Whenever there's a piece in the skin that I want to recolor and use, I open it in PS and recolor it, like you did, and then save it to the skin folder but add something like -modded to the file name (so the original is left intact), and then with the skin open in skin studio I browse to that section, click on the image I want to replace (like your start menu button) and browse to the modded one I made, then save and apply the skin. I've never tried the start button though, I usually mod the flashing task button (so it's more noticeable in some skins).

vStyler
Reply #2 Tuesday, April 3, 2007 8:36 PM
You cant just set transparency in SKS, you have to import an image that is translucent for a translucent taskbar. Then make sure that you have both transparency and Translucency "checked" for the appropriate image in its attributes section.

Last thing is to make sure Background Effect section is set to "Translucent taskbar effect" in the taskbar image attributes.  

silentrob37
Reply #3 Thursday, April 5, 2007 4:52 PM
thanks for your help, but now i have another question..
i noticed that when i tried to apply transparency to the left and right images for the windows that the transparency and translucency checkboxes are greyed out (i can't use them), but i know it's possible to. how can i?

vStyler
Reply #4 Thursday, April 5, 2007 5:00 PM
You have to use the Dropdown box up top and Choose Active Window - Tranlucent.. Only THOSE frames will handle trans. They are the per pixel frames.

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