[Mike_Doc]

Hi,

For someone with little to no graphics abilities I just wondered what people do when they want to create new textures for either an existing skin or creating a new look for a skin?

Any pointers?

Mike

[sualfred]

You mean only the textures without xml editing?
I guess they just extract the textures file and do some Photoshop/Gimp magic

Edit
I my case I started to include the Photoshop .psd files to my GitHub repo, so modders have a better control of the existing ones.

[Mike_Doc]

yes sorry, meant all the textures / graphic used in the skin and what people do it they actually create new files to use in the skin? I know Photoshop / GIMP but wondered what some might do if they didn't have the skills for those applications?

I sometimes think about doing a new skin but then have no idea how to do the textures to form the graphics of the skin so don't bother in the end.

[sualfred]

The same way a user has to learn how the Kodi engine works -> Learning by doing.

[Jeroen]

There's a huuuuugge amount of tutorials to be found for Photoshop. I bet there are a lot for other Gimp too.
It really is a matter of practice.

[Rantanplan-1]

From my point of view u dont realy need a lot of textures to create a skin. A white square nd thats it beside the needed icons. Just use colordiffuse to color the white image, same for transparence.

If ur looking for new "unused" icons u might finde some in the www

[sualfred]

+1 
Rantanplan-1 is right

A simple white.jpg combined with colordiffuse also makes it easier to create color themes.

For icons you can use fonts or free databases. Examples:

• https://material.io/icons/ 
  
• http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/
  
• https://materialdesignicons.com/
  

For busy spinners you can also use tools like this:
http://hmaidasani.github.io/RadialChartImageGenerator/


My Embuary has only a few very, very simple textures. All other things are created with the same method from above.

But if you want to create a non-flat fancy skin, you have to get some basic Photoshop skills. As Jeroen said -> YT and tutorials are your friends.

[Highly]

If The Gimp is counter intuitive and Photoshop too expensive...use PowerPoint. Before you laugh too hard, it supports transparency at the object or effect level and you can select an object group, right-click, and save as .png. You can mock up each page of your skin quickly and then refine as you go...even proof animation concepts. Page setup allows any arbitrary page size, so 16:9 or 8:3 aspect ratios are a breeze to set up. Comments allow you to leave yourself notes as you go. It's not the end-all be-all of graphics apps, but it is pretty well suited to non-graphics-enthusiasts plus many people already have it and are familiar with it. You asked for an alternative...