Quote de gonano
I'm having problems creating a true RGBA PNG file using Photoshop. I am using an empty layer as background. I have tried "Save For Web & Devices" and "Save as", "transparency" is checked and "interlaced" is not.
I know the PNGs are transparent because I can look at them and they are transparent but they just won't load in my theme. Everything else loads just not my Other.artwork PNGs.
Using:
mytheme/Folders/UIKit.framework/other-107.png
and
mytheme/UIImages/other-107.png
Photoshop CS3, OS X
one thing I noticed is that when skinning with winterboard you have to use the actual name of the file.
you have to use the file I posted in my first post.
read this (all credit goes to Saurik)
Cached .artwork Themes
Finally, the most complex example of image-based themes I've so far seen has to do with .artwork files. These files exist as loading lots of small .png files from disk can be irritatingly time consuming, so instead they are loaded as block and stored (I believe) in a shared memory cache. As these tiny graphics are often used to build all aspects of the interface these represent the ultia thule of iPhone theming.
Messing with them, though, is currently really hard: you have to use special tools to unpack the files and all you get out of them are a bunch of numerically-named png files (.artwork files don't have filenames in them). You then have to carefully make new images of the same size and rebuild the complete .artwork file, which then has to be installed on the phone with a rickety package that attempts to backup and restore the original. Yeek!
After I heard about this, I set out to fix this with WinterBoard: I want theming to be a fun, safe experience that can be taken up by anybody without special tools. To do this I first analyzed how .artwork files worked, and lo and behold there actually are filenames that go with all of those png files people were compressing (already this makes the task a million times easier.
example: