Creating your own skins Part 1

Avant Browser Help - Creating your own skins Part 1

These tutorials were created to help fill the gap on just how to create skins for Avant Browser. This first part will go over the tools that can be used to create skins.

To create the actual skin, you will need the Skin Factory (Download it here).

Tools that could be used include:

PhotoShop
MS Paint - included with windows
Illustrator
Freehand
CorelDraw
PaintShopPro - affordable
ImageForge - freeware
GIMP - freeware
Pixia - freeware
Just about any Icon Editing Package *

PixelToolBox - freeware
SnIco Edit - free/donate ware
Microangelo - 21 day demo
Icon Editor - 30 day demo
IconForge - time-limited trial
Photoshop is not really the best choice for this since you need crisp, sharp lines. So, when you scale and resize, you get a blending/blurring that plays with the final output where you need a sharp icon.

Icon editors have their own problem, most do not output to a BMP file. My fix around this is to edit in the icon editor and then screen shot it into photoshop for final cleanup and exporting.

Another thing I have noticed with some icon editors is that they may not do all the sizes you need for AB icons. AB uses 16x16 for small icons, 24x24 for large icons and 21x21 for the system icons. Some icon editors do not have the option for 24x24 and 21x21 .. but this is where something like photoshop will come in handy. You can create at 32x32 and then bring into photoshop and scale it down to 24x24 or 21x21 and just a little cleanup will be needed.

Next: Creating your own skins - Part 2

See Also:

Creating your own skins - Part 2
Creating your own skins - Part 3
Creating your own skins - Part 4
Creating your own skins - Part 5