Skin Features
There are five small icons located on the right side of the title bar of ColorWasher. The first one is for opening a skin preset file and the other four are for adjusting and changing the skin.
Open Skin
The first icon from the left that is displayed in the title bar opens up a file dialog for choosing a CWS file. CWS files are skin preset files that apply a special skin to the ColorWasher dialog. Such a skin preset can add a new background color, background texture or background images as well as a new label color.
If you removed the default skin of ColorWasher accidentally and want it back, just open the file DefaultSkin.cws with this icon. To create your own skin and CWS file for ColorWasher, see the instructions below.
Background Color
The second icon on the title bar opens up a color dialog for selecting a uniform background color. If there is a background texture or image currently used, it will be removed and replaced by a plain background color.
Background Texture
The third icon on the title bar displays a file dialog for selecting a seamless texture in BMP format. This texture will be tiled over the window background. If a background color or image was used before, the tiled texture will replace it.
Background Image
Clicking the fourth icon on the title bar opens a file dialog for choosing an image in BMP format. The image will be stretched over the background of the ColorWasher dialog. If a background color or texture was used before, the stretched image will replace it.
Please note that you can specify a different image for the Quick & Easy Mode and the Advanced mode. If you want to specify a background image for the Quick &Easy Mode, please activate Quick & Easy Mode and use this icon. If you want to specify a background image for the Advanced Mode, please activate Advanced Mode and use this icon. If you specify only one image, it will be used for both modes.
Text Color
The outer right icon on the title bar lets you change the color of the control labels. When you use a special background color, texture or image, the label color may become unrecognizable. With this icon you can specify another color and make them visible again.
Creating your Own Skin for ColorWasher
You can design your own skin for Color Washer by following these steps:
1. Remove the current skin of ColorWasher by setting a uniform color for the background with the second icon in the tool bar.
2. Take a screen shot of the client area of ColorWasher (e.g. Paint Shop Pro has such an client screen shot option). If you don't have a client area screen shot tool within reach, take a screen shot of the full window and remove the the 3-pixel border at each of the four sides of the screen shot. The final screen shot image should be 800 x 572 pixel large.
3. Open the screen shot in an image application and turn the background into a layer.
4. Activate the Magic Wand tool, click with it on the uniform background and invert the selection.
5. Edit the selection, e.g. by deselecting the check box labels or other parts that you don't want to affect.
6. Deactivate the screen shot layer and add a new layer for doing the skin underneath.
7. Apply some kind of drop shadow or other effects to the new layer.
8. Check the effect by activating the screen shot layer and setting its transparency to 10 - 25%. Then deactivate the screen shot layer again.
9. Select other parts of the interface, apply another effects and so on...
10. Save the skin layer as a BMP file and place it in the Skins sub folder of Color Washer.
Please note: You can specify a separate image skin for Advanced mode and Quick & Easy Mode while you are in one of the two modes. So if your skin isn't too simple, you will need to create another skin for Quick & Easy Mode.
To create a skin preset file for your skin image, please follow these steps:
1. Run ColorWasher and deactivate Quick & Easy Mode if necessary.
2. Click on the fourth icon in the title bar and select your skin file in the appearing file dialog.
3. If you created a separate skin for Quick & Easy mode, please activate Quick & Easy mode. Then click on the fourth icon in the title bar and select your skin file in the appearing file dialog.
4. When you switch between Advanced Mode and Quick & Easy Mode, the appropriate skin image should be displayed.
5. To create the skin preset file run the Windows Explorer and switch to the ColorWasher folder.
6. Copy the file Skin.ini into the Skins sub folder and rename it. You can use any name you like, but please also change the ".ini" file extension to ".cws".
7. Open your skin preset file in Notepad. You will see something like this:
8. Remove the path from the last or last two lines and only leave the file name. This ensures that the skin preset will work when you reinstall ColorWasher to a different folder or when you want to send your skin preset to other people. Now it should look like this:
9. Finally use File > Save in Notepad to save the changes.
10. If you want to distribute your skin to other users, please make sure that you include the .cws file as well as the needed .bmp files. Tell other ColorWasher users to copy these files into the Skins sub folder of ColorWasher.