Topic: Some new skins, all 6 skins (in 2 parts each) (Read 10955 times)

kmrylander · « **on:** July 03, 2012, 12:28:13 pm »

Hello to everyone. I'm not a frequent poster, but mostly listen, watch and learn. With a recent back surgery which has
left me with way more time on my hands than I am used to, I began playing around with skinning. I LOVE J River, as it has
allowed me to go to a completely computer controlled set up with active speakers and room correction.

Two things brought me to produce these skins--too much time

, and my desire to have a preamp look to J River to replace the real thing (not sure why I miss that part of going active, but that's the ONLY thing I miss!)

I haven't totally finished them all--they just keep morphing and there are some parts that aren't finished (slim player and full screen which
I rarely use, and other small parts that I keep discovering (and I'm still having issues consistently figuring out all of the color
controls from within the .xml file--sometimes I think I know what colors changes where, and other times I get it totally wrong.)

Some of the buttons and controls I "rethought" to go along with my "theme"--the larger buttons or lack there of may not be everyone's favorite. I know it won't work for everyone. These are definitely not minimalist skins.

Sorry for the long ramble, just thought it would be good to know my choices and why my skins are "top heavy" (I like more room at the
top of the skin and larger buttons (like a real preamp). Since I don't use multiple views, or tag, or use the more buried menus (or play video,
or view pictures much yet) these are very useable for my use.

I have no idea how they look on other size monitors or even with certain views that I don't use. I use my Ultrabook (15" screen ) to design
and view the skins. J River, which does the convolution and control of the soundcard, is on my main machine in another room--it controls everything, but I rarely use JRiver from that computer except for rips/tags/changes. My notebook is my primary source of using and viewing
these skins.

Thanks so much for looking. Feel free to comment. I have NO graphics training, or much computer training (even the .xml file was new and challenging)
so this has been a learning process from the ground up.

Ken

I apologize if its not cool to borrow/modify elements of other skins--I've used some parts, modified others and started from scratch in many places. I made these skins for me and I'm really pretty pleased/proud of the results.

I've used brand names for 3 skins (I like logos), but if its in bad taste/illegal to use them without permission (which I don't have), then those should go.

**Emotiva came about because I own/like the amps (I own 7 amps/channels that power my active speakers.)
**ML just seemed to look good (to me) as I've always liked the look of Mark Levinson gear--simple, but substantial--and one of just a few
of my skins without a lot of blue!
**TubeAmp--I've always owned Audio Research tube gear until going active and this one came together nicely
**GuitarAmp--I don't play, but wish I did, so it was neat theme to pursue. I thought it came together wonderfully.
**Steampunk--this is a wild skin--I'm sure not many will like it as it almost garish! I LOVE the band RUSH and their latest stage
sets and album lead me to want to have a skin based on this theme. LOTS going on in this one. I've borrowed lots of stuff from them for this.
**silverhex (couldn't come up with a better name) is mostly my choices of colors and dimension. I learned a lot about GIMP doing this one.
I think its actually one of the best skins.

kmrylander · « **Reply #1 on:** July 03, 2012, 12:29:21 pm »

sorry, I couldn't figure out a good way to post all 6 skins, so I'm adding each one as a reply

Ken

kmrylander · « **Reply #2 on:** July 03, 2012, 12:30:20 pm »

another skin

kmrylander · « **Reply #3 on:** July 03, 2012, 12:30:49 pm »

and another

kmrylander · « **Reply #4 on:** July 03, 2012, 12:31:16 pm »

and another

kmrylander · « **Reply #5 on:** July 03, 2012, 12:31:42 pm »

last one

AoXoMoXoA · « **Reply #6 on:** July 03, 2012, 01:31:05 pm »

Remarkable, very nice work.

Where can I download them???

kmrylander · « **Reply #7 on:** July 03, 2012, 03:15:15 pm »

Thanks. I'm sure they are too busy for many people, but they were fun to do and I enjoy using them for my "front end"

I'm still in the process of "cleaning" up the folders--I made a lot of 1st, 2nd, 3rd versions of each element and left them in the folders as I worked so I just had to change the .xml file to see what looked best. Shows how much of a novice I am. Now I have lots of cleaning up to do.

I figured I'd see if there was any interest and then I need to look in to how to post the skins. I just did this for fun and don't know a lot about that.

Ken

kensn · « **Reply #8 on:** July 03, 2012, 03:26:19 pm »

I believe there is always intrest in skins. I am fond of the guitar amp design.

Nice to see some fesh ideas....

Ken

kmrylander · « **Reply #9 on:** July 03, 2012, 03:29:58 pm »

Thanks for the encouragement. I will be looking into making sure I think I've got most of the colors and frames in the skin done and then see about submitting them. Its amazing how long it takes though. I have new respect for graphics people.

Ken

hooli · « **Reply #10 on:** July 03, 2012, 04:15:29 pm »

Very nice!

AoXoMoXoA · « **Reply #11 on:** July 03, 2012, 04:54:00 pm »

They are one better than the next . . . .

Emotiva or Silverhex would be nice as MC18's default skin

kmrylander · « **Reply #12 on:** July 03, 2012, 04:55:23 pm »

Wow, thanks. I'm working on submitting them. I'm worried that there are areas of the skin that are subpar, but I guess people can see for themselves and go from there.

kmrylander · « **Reply #13 on:** July 03, 2012, 05:20:57 pm »

Thought I would try this....I'm putting an attachment on this and the next reply that contains the 2 parts of the Emotiva skin. I think you should just be able to unzip them, combine them into one folder and drop that folder into the J River, standard skins folder.

kmrylander · « **Reply #14 on:** July 03, 2012, 05:21:31 pm »

part 2

AoXoMoXoA · « **Reply #15 on:** July 03, 2012, 05:33:24 pm »

Download worked, unzipped fine, dropped the folder into MC and it works.

Two problems I see are:

1) I cannot select Tabs in the View window (But I can navigate fine within one Tab using the tree, so only an inconvenience)

2) When you click in the Tree, the highlighted branch and it's text lack enough contrast to be read easily.

Otherwise it is great.

kmrylander · « **Reply #16 on:** July 03, 2012, 05:43:02 pm »

Hmmm. I assume you mean the main window (view window) where all of the albums show up (if for example you have selected the album view from the tree)? I can select and add tabs (right below the top of the skin) there, so I'm not sure....I figured there would be lots of problems with views I don't use, so let me know if I'm in the right spot so I can try to see it here.

The contrast on the text I'm not sure about. By highlighted branch, do you mean when you click on the small blue arrows at the side to expand within the tree (sorry I'm not sure I know all the proper terms for each part of the skin)

I did have to change the brightness once I made the skin--it looks great in my gimp files, but turned out much darker when it was a skin. Does that help any?

kmrylander · « **Reply #17 on:** July 03, 2012, 05:50:22 pm »

Hmmmmmm...I'm still not sure. I tried downloading it myself and made it into a new skin (Test) and it looks identical to the original. So at least I got all the right parts in the file I put up

Sorry about that. Guess its good I did this for my own enjoyment and that it works on my set up (glad I don't do this for a living

Let me know if you see anything else, since I don't want to put up a bunch of stuff that will frustrate other users.

Ken

AoXoMoXoA · « **Reply #18 on:** July 03, 2012, 05:52:31 pm »

I know these are still being worked on, so I thought you'd like to know what we see . . .

re: contrast - what I speak of is like if you click on "Playing Now" in the tree, it turns light blue but the white text gets bleached.

re: the Tabs - I have 3 Tabs, only the active one responds with a drop-down menu when I click on it, the other two do nothing . . . I cannot select them nor do I get a drop-down menu when I click

AoXoMoXoA · « **Reply #19 on:** July 03, 2012, 05:54:39 pm »

Quote from: kmrylander on July 03, 2012, 05:50:22 pm

Let me know if you see anything else, since I don't want to put up a bunch of stuff that will frustrate other users.

Ken

no worry, most of us are used to working with works-in-progress and are very patient.

Also, do not feel you are obligated by anything but your own desires.

kmrylander · « **Reply #20 on:** July 03, 2012, 06:02:45 pm »

I went to the tree, clicked Playing Now...I see the standard transparent highlight go a littler "bluer" , but my text underneath stays very white.....I'm not sure why that would be. The .xml file should be the same, so I have no idea what would cause that.

In the View window I made three tabs--albums, genre and playing now.....they all have drop down menus (accessed with the little triangle) and I can switch between them at will. I wish I could see what you are seeing, because I would like to fix it. I really think the skins turned out well (for my preferences) and I remembering wishing there were more skins available when I started all of this...I'd love to provide a few to others who haven't (or can't) make their own skins.

Did the contrast or brightness have any effect on this? What version of Media Center are you using. I'm using the latest stable version of MC17. Could that have anything to do with it?

Thanks for spending the time on this.

AoXoMoXoA · « **Reply #21 on:** July 03, 2012, 06:10:43 pm »

There are a lot of people here who are good at skinning and often can be very helpful, perhaps one will wander through and offer some input.

I will try to get a screenshot posted at some point soon.

kmrylander · « **Reply #22 on:** July 03, 2012, 06:14:00 pm »

That would be nice. I wondered how my creations would behave in other environments and its seems there must be something I've missed. Sorry about that.

I wonder if anyone else has tried it and what they are getting? If I get more info I'll gladly look into it and repost the skin to try out.

Thanks again.

marko · « **Reply #23 on:** July 04, 2012, 12:58:37 am »

With regard to the contrast issues, it could well be that you are bumping into the fact that all monitors are not created equally, especially these flat panel jobs we've all fallen in love with.

I've bumped into it twice now...
Here with "Seamless" and here with "Arctic Winter". With the Arctic Winter skin, a made a new version that seemed to a lot better generally, though I still like the original which looks great on my monitor!!

Downloading your skin now for a look-see...

marko · « **Reply #24 on:** July 04, 2012, 01:28:45 am »

OK, I've had a look, and a quick whizz around, and it looks to be OK to me. I don't have a problem reading selected items in the tree (Sorry Lisa

)

The only issue I see is that you have some graphics going on in the bottom left corner, but these are obscured by my bottom toolbar items, making a mess...

Perhaps think about moving them into the bottom right hand corner where they shouldn't clash with anything else going on.

On a personal level, my tired old eyes find the overall contrast of the skin a little too drastic. It gives the skin an extremely "busy" feel to it that I can't cope with. Try selecting multiple files, thumbs or details, all that "dark-bright-dark-bright" is too much for me

Functionally though, it would appear to be fine and should win a lot of fans.
Skinning for MC is not for the faint hearted and I know how much time you will have spent on this. Well done, and keep it up. Looking forward to trying your next release, hoping it's "Tubeamp", not sure about the bottom left corner though

-marko.

kmrylander · « **Reply #25 on:** July 04, 2012, 06:23:24 am »

Ahh.... I see about the mainframe bottom bar. I don't have a menu there, but now that I see what you have, I can see that it could be a problem, depending on where people put things. I think I use very little of Media Centers capabilities so when I put graphics down there, its obvious I wasn't thinking about that--just going for a certain look visually. If I post other skins I'll need to change many of the bottom borders!

In regards to contrast....I'm guessing it is monitor related. I like the notebook, but I've noticed that since having problems with some photos, I looked into "calibrating" my monitors (a loose term, since it was done with free tools from the internet). I found that in every case, I had my monitors way too bright. I've noticed on my better monitor on the main computer things usually look much better.
On this notebook I can get variations from the top to the bottom of the screen where the dark portions (or light) can blend in or wash out depending on the viewing angle. So there may be things that I did on this monitor that are worse for some people. I find that I have to change the contrast and brightness for most of the skins as the original work I do in GIMP seems lighter than what I see when it gets skinned.

When you refer to it being too busy (which I don't doubt), do you mean....the very dark backgrounds and very light text. This was my first skin and to figure out colors I began using very obvious colors (like black or white) so I could see if it was changing. The list selection overlays (transparent) were borrowed from black on black, but I'm guessing that when I choose white text it makes things too stark. It makes sense now why in other skins there is lots of light grey text. Is that what you see?

Thanks for the input. I'll look at it later. Here is tubeamp....but first I have to get rid of the graphics on the bottom

I took out the xlr graphics the bottom and made a new basic border, but left the old one in the folder. I THINK it should work. Maybe this one will look okay....maybe not

kmrylander · « **Reply #26 on:** July 04, 2012, 06:25:53 am »

tube amp part 2

Same thing...since I can't figure out how to do a good job posting the whole file, just unzip both parts and put all elements into a folder and then drop them into the Standard skins folder in J River. (don't mean to insult anyone with obvious directions, but just wanted to make sure in case anyone stumbles across this thread)

Ken

kmrylander · « **Reply #27 on:** July 04, 2012, 06:27:10 am »

ahhh....have to attach the file before I post! sorry
here is part 2

marko · « **Reply #28 on:** July 04, 2012, 12:15:44 pm »

I don't have a lot of time this evening, so quick post, will try to add more in the morning...

Tubeamp is great, I could use that for sure. Very easy on the eye

There are some things wrong though...

The xml file references Playerbar_Display2.png for the display, but the file is not included.
The DSP and repeat buttons, all of the player control buttons, volume slider etc are not being drawn, I'm guessing for the same reason.

I like where you're heading with it though, good work so far, just a bit more to go to make it a bit less obvious which skin you chose as your base

-marko

kmrylander · « **Reply #29 on:** July 04, 2012, 01:18:30 pm »

Ahh!!!! I seem to have copied only SOME of the files when I broke the folder into 2! Sorry about that.

This skin is very different with its player buttons--they aren't buttons at all, but a Volt meter with moving dial, so I'm curious how you feel about that. I'm sure some people will think its cool and other will HATE it. Who knows.

I'll repost it and hopefully you can see more of what I intended

. I know I should have gone further with the other buttons from the previous skin, but I kind of liked how they fit in and couldn't come up with better ones, so I just stuck with those

Thanks for giving feedback. I hope this time it actually works!

Ken

kmrylander · « **Reply #30 on:** July 04, 2012, 01:19:23 pm »

newtubeamp part 2

hooli · « **Reply #31 on:** July 05, 2012, 06:59:48 pm »

Guitar Amp soon?

kmrylander · « **Reply #32 on:** July 05, 2012, 07:56:35 pm »

Yes, I actually tried a submission (haven't ever done that before.) I just got an email, but unfortunately I think I found a problem with the shuffle, repeat buttons, so I'll put them up in 2 parts here and try to fix that later.

This one has some different thinking....I think the words under the guitar dials is a little dark, but I like the white glow when mousing over so I left it. It also has the Play/Pause reversed---the skin shows what is currently selected (play or pause) because they are dials and not symbols. It may not make sense, but it made sense to me

there is lots of "junk" in these folders since I tried LOTS of different graphics to see what I liked and wasn't in the mood to clean it all up since I've gone back and forth on some of the choices. Sorry.

Ken

kmrylander · « **Reply #33 on:** July 05, 2012, 07:59:02 pm »

guitar amp2

Just make sure you understand that I know there are some problems with the "theme". Using the speaker grill cloth for the tree looks cool(to me), but it gets less enjoyable in some of the menus and in smaller ones like Play Doctor is can look downright bad. I stuck with things I liked the look of and views I used most often.

kmrylander · « **Reply #34 on:** July 05, 2012, 08:49:12 pm »

I figured that with all my best intentions to get the skins and folders cleaned up and "finished" I would post them when I got it to my liking. Its turning out that there are many issues that may make it very difficult to ever get the skins "done" since i just don't have the graphics training nor the computer expertise to really make sure they are "professional".

So I figured I would just put out what I have done---I've had fun doing them and learned a great deal using the excellent work from the others whose skins I have studied and used as the base for my own ideas.

I hope there are people who like what I've done so far. I'm not sure I have the ability to get everything totally finished, so I hope someone likes what they see and takes it/uses it or modifies it. I know I'll keep working on them for my own use and if anyone has any tips or requests it will be fun to see how it all turns out.

The biggest issue with some of my skins is the lack of completeness--there are elements of many of the other great skins in mine. I also played around with patterns in the tree which looked cool in some places, but gets kind of ugly in other places. Since I mostly use these skins for my front end, I don't use lots of these views and so they don't bother me, but they are easily removed. I've left a lot of my attempts in the folders so sometimes the original graphics or some of my other choices are still there to be used--it can be kind of messy in the folders.

Ken

kmrylander · « **Reply #35 on:** July 05, 2012, 08:50:02 pm »

Mark Levinson, part 2

kmrylander · « **Reply #36 on:** July 05, 2012, 08:53:24 pm »

SilverHex

I really like this one, but the tree pattern gets tough in many other spots besides the tree. it can be easily taken out.

kmrylander · « **Reply #37 on:** July 05, 2012, 08:54:23 pm »

Silverhex, part 2

kmrylander · « **Reply #38 on:** July 05, 2012, 09:00:30 pm »

Go easy on me for this one---I had the most fun doing this, but it is LOUD.
I don't use this very often, but its fun and I've grown to like Steampunk a lot since seeing the Rush live sets/videos.

I can't imagine many (any?) people really liking this one, but I really do, so I thought I would put it up.

Steampunk1

kmrylander · « **Reply #39 on:** July 05, 2012, 09:01:49 pm »

Steampunk2

hooli · « **Reply #40 on:** July 06, 2012, 09:33:28 am »

Thanks very much for sharing. Using guitaramp now.

kmrylander · « **Reply #41 on:** July 06, 2012, 10:22:51 am »

I'm glad you like it. I thought that one turned out pretty cool, but I know the blue lettering under the play/pause/next/previous buttons can be hard to see. I did it both ways but liked the subtle blue rather than the bright white.

Let me know if you see something glaring--I found that one of the repeat buttons was off and it kept squishing the button, so I reverted back to my original graphics and that seems to be okay.

Fabricio · « **Reply #42 on:** July 06, 2012, 10:34:12 am »

Very good. I liked. Excellent work. Lots of creativity.

Thanks ...

Fabricio, from Brazil.

kmrylander · « **Reply #43 on:** July 06, 2012, 10:58:32 am »

Cool. thanks for the input. I understand why there aren't a lot of skins out there....That is a LOT of work, and I used portions of other people's great work as the basis, so I didn't have to redo everything. I can't imagine doing every element from scratch.

hooli · « **Reply #44 on:** July 06, 2012, 05:10:26 pm »

The only changes I made were making the volume slider button smaller and I changed the text color in the action frame, it blended in too much when viewing the tag section. I do see where the play and pause color could be hard to see. I may change it later. I've been using J River since 9 or 10 and your skins are among my favorites. Thanks again!

kmrylander · « **Reply #45 on:** July 06, 2012, 07:27:57 pm »

Wow. That's really nice to hear. Thanks, especially since I have ZERO graphics ability and didn't even know how to use GIMP/Photoshop when I started this.

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Author Topic: Some new skins, all 6 skins (in 2 parts each) (Read 10955 times)