How To Make Sidekick Icons

Making icons for the Sidekick is the same as making icons for any other purpose. Icons are just small images used to represent a program, file, and etc. therefore any image can be converted into an icon. The only difference between regular images and icons is that regular images do not contain an alpha channel. The alpha channel is used to represent up to 256 levels of transparency. When you add the alpha channel to a regular image you can make parts of that image be transparent or semi-transparent. If you look at the default instant message icon image on your Sidekick you will see a yellow smiley, but if you open the image in Photoshop or GIMP you will see the yellow smiley inside a squared transparent background. If you were to save that same icon in JPG or BMP format the transparent background will become white, that is because JPG and BMP do not store alpha channel information.

I've seen many themes posted with icons with a squared black/white background, that is becuase they have uploaded JPG or BMP files to the theme creator on the SkLX/SkSlide websites. The theme creator does not remove backgrounds for you, so do not expect to get an icon with a transparent background from there unless that's what you're sending. Formats that support the alpha channel include PNG, ICO, PSD, GIF and others, for Sidekick themes you only need to work with the PNG format.

In the video below I will show you how to add the alpha channel to regular images so that they can be saved in PNG format and used as icons. Part 1 of the video shows how to do it on Photoshop & Part 2 shows how to do it on GIMP. If you're watching this video I assume you already know Photoshop/GIMP basics and I will not go into detail about resizing and fitting the images. This video is no way near a tutorial on how to extract images (remove backgrounds), there are hundreds of ways to extract images, If you do not know how to extract images, I suggest you watch videos on how to do it because in this video I'll use the simplest method which does not necessarily yield the best results. If you're watching this video to learn how to make icons for your Sidekick themes, you should download one of the theme templates below:

Sk Slide Template

Sk LX/2008 Template

The icons made in this video can be found in my PACMAN theme.

How To Fit Images

It sounds like something very simple to do yet, It seems many theme makers still can't figure out how to fit images. The easiest way to fit an image is obviously resizing it, but resizing doesn't always work. If you take a squared wallpaper of a ball and resize it for a rectangular shaped screen, the ball is going to start looking more like an egg. In this video, I will show you how to use the aspect ratio lock feature on Adobe Photoshop to keep the proportions of your images. This video also includes a couple tips you can use for filling space when the image doesn't fill up your wallpaper space. The wallpapers I made in this video are for the Sidekick LX, you can download the finished wallpapers below!

P.S. I used the Lil Wayne wallpaper below for Tha Carter III theme which can now be downloaded for SkLX & SkSlide.