Starting to make a Skin, need some help please

**Slickrick2000** · 03-08-2006, 11:13 PM

Well, I have no carputer, only an idea of what I want.

My carputer is planned out, and I have drawn out how I want to make my skins, but I need some help starting to make the graphics.

First, I am making one skin to fit on a 7" touchscreen, and one to fit a 10.4 screen.

I am pretty new to Photoshop, but do know some basics, and I kind of need to know what size I need to make my images, so that they will fit the screens.

Should I just find out what the actual screen size is of the screens and make it the same in PS? Or do you guys go by pixals? What about Resolutions?
I have sizes I want the buttons to be already, and have drawn it to scale in Autocad. Just need to get it over to PS and add all the textures I want.

Next, are there any good threads on how to make a skin? I don't really care what front end it goes to, because I am thinking I may have to figure out how to write my own front end to do what I want it to do. I just need a place to start.

Thanks guys, I know you experts out there can point me in the write direction.

**Slickrick2000** · 03-09-2006, 08:26 PM

Hummm...no pointers or ideas on where to look?

I did find the tutorial made for making a skin for RR. That answered some questions I had. But what about the canvas size?

**lostreception** · 03-09-2006, 08:29 PM

the 10.4 will be standard 4:3 resolution 800x600 or similar 1024x768 will both fit id suggest 800x600
and the native res of the 7in assuming its a xenarc super lilli or similar will be 16:9 wide screen
800x480

good luck try downloading some existing skins and modding them as well

**lostreception** · 03-09-2006, 08:31 PM

also roadrunner and most of the other frontends will stretch a 800x600 to fit a 7 in and vice versa but if you want it to look as u designed stick to those dimensions

**DavC** · 03-10-2006, 04:49 AM

find the native resolution for the screens you are going to use and make your canvas this size (in pixels) and all should be great!

how did you scale your skins in cad? did you work off physical sizes? just wondering if you could zoom in by a certain amount, and use the export > bitmap function and then you could use this as a template? only an idea, not sure how well it will work!

**Slickrick2000** · 03-10-2006, 09:46 AM

Originally Posted by DavC

find the native resolution for the screens you are going to use and make your canvas this size (in pixels) and all should be great!

how did you scale your skins in cad? did you work off physical sizes? just wondering if you could zoom in by a certain amount, and use the export > bitmap function and then you could use this as a template? only an idea, not sure how well it will work!

Well I am not sure what monitors I will be getting yet. I would like to get a 10.4 and a 7" touchscreen, but what brands I don't know yet.

As far as CAD goes, everything is drawn in 1 to 1, so I just found some screen dimensions somewhere, and started there. I did export it into Illustrator by using a WMF last night, but haven't tried doing anything with it yet. Was going to try exporting it to Photoshop as a BMP tonight.

I need to learn Photoshop a little better to be able to what I want to do with this skin. So far I have been having trouble with having certain parts of layers showing and being covered by other layers. But thats just a layer planning issue I think.

I guess I'll just go with the common resolutions and change it if it doesn't work with what I end up buying.

Thanks guys