How to Create Xfire Skins With Gimp
Fans of the gaming messaging service Xfire are often inspired to create their own custom skins. Creating a skin takes both design experience and some basic familiarity with coding. A good skin can take a lot of practice to perfect, but having a skin that matches the aesthetic of your desktop can be well worth the effort. Users of the open-source design software GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) will find that its versatile editing tools are well-suited to perfecting a new skin.
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Instructions
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Open the Xfire Program Data folder located within the Program Files folder on your hard drive. Open the folder named "Skins." Choose a skin to use as a template. Each skin is comprised of multiple image files for the frames, borders, buttons, and other elements. You will need to edit each one in order to complete a full skin.
Right click on a single skin folder and select "Copy" to duplicate it. Right click on your desktop and select "Paste."
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Launch GIMP. Open the File menu and click the folder icon labeled "Open." Choose the Desktop folder from the menu on the left side of the pop-up window. Select the first image file and click the "Open" button.
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Use the GIMP toolbox to edit and redesign the skin elements. It is a good idea to save any changes to new project files, rather than save over the original image, just in case you need to start from scratch. To do this, open the File menu and click "Save As..." Change the file name to reflect that it is an edited version.
Once all editing is complete, use the "Save As..." option to save your skin design as either a GIF or PNG file. Xfire will not recognize skins in JPEG format. This process will need to be repeated for every image file within the skin folder.
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Once all the image files have been completed, save all the files into a new folder. You will also need to include the edited .xml files for the skin. Right click on the folder and select "Send To..." From this menu, select "Compressed (zipped) folder". Place the compressed folder within the main Xfire Skins folder.
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