Tell me fellow skin makers, whats your take on EQ bars?, I ask as I sit here looking at a half completed skin im working on, a celeb image skin and I've set out with the intention of removing the EQ bars to let the image shine through.

My question here is, how many of you are bothered by the bars ?, I've done image skins before like this with the bars removed, and been slapped down for not making the skin "functional", however its popularity of downloads suggest that people preffered the bar less version to the standard version.

Personnaly I never use them, prefer using presets myself.
Surely with the impending arrival of WA3 and its "stick your buttons and bars anywhere you like" thing we are going to see a lot more skins with bits missing.

While I believe that the bars work on texture skins and the like, I do belive that image skins sometimes work better without the bars, check out a couple of Duks skins, in particular this ONE , remove the bars and re-zip it, turns it into a totaly differnt skin ;)

Is it just me who thinks like this, or are there others who appreciate the bar less winamp?
Back to the day job :)

I don't need to remove the eqsliders to see what's hidden underneath :D hehehe...

anyway, I HATE skinning the Eq bars, because they make it a lot more difficult to do something original with the eq. Like when you have a photo, or some buatiful artwork you wanna put there...and then winamp draws 11 of those frigging rectangle-sliders on top. But I do always skin them , because I use the eq a lot. It's a choice you have to make, it's either a picture with loss of functionality or 11 of those ugly little bastards....ya can't have both (and that sucks, I know :p )

Yessir!
 

I'm with ya 100% Mr Jones. Celeb skins and other such image skins look best with the eq bars totally cropped out. I wonder tho ... what "rating" do you think a skin without EQ Bars would get? My guess? 2 stars. :(

Conversely, i LOVE EQ bars - I think of all the parts of the skin they demand the most creativity. If you look- all 4 of my skins use EQ bars in what I think are interesting ways.

I think for your celeb skin, you could do something like I did for my dada amp- do little different litle slivers of photos.

Re: Yessir!
 

I tell you what you get , you go from 5 star rated, down to 3 because you are deemed to have made it non functional. Me wonders if this line will become common practice among whatever form of reviews take place on WA3 skins, after all when somebody makes that "big ass skin with one big button" will that be practicle?

Oh and Xerxes, good idea about the picture slicing, might give that a look see.
Back to the day job :)

well mr jones, i personaly don't use eq, i use preset, i like eq becouse some of them are ver nicely done and it looks cool, but if it's gonna look more cool without it i think you should go for it, or u could just make 2 versions of that skin one with and one w/out eq :) (just an idea)
peace out

ROFL!!! I just realized which skin you referred everyone to in that post yonder up there Mr Jones. Now I'm thinkin' maybe I shouldn't of airbrushed that ... eh hem ... pinkish portion on the ... ummm ... ya know, chest-al area out. Perhaps it's for the best I did if'n ya go croppin' out those EQ Bars tho. ;)

Well, there are a lot of us out there who love to use the eq bars. I use them all the time. Some songs are recorded poorly, and need to be tweeked. I have made...hmm...well, one skin without eqs, and sure it looks good, but the functionality is lost. No matter how you put it, it's gone. It's just a trade-off some are willing to take.

If that's what you want to do, then go for it.
You really shouldn't care about what the reviewers say.

But here's an idea:
Why not skin both versions?
A lot of my fellow skinners do that. They skin two different versions. That way, everyone's pleased.

I say you do that. And submit them both separately.

Another 50/50 vote from the guys here, of course what I should have said at the beggining is that yes I do often do both versions if the image warrants it.

I agree with a lot of whats been said here, yes Amp I hate skinning them like you, mainly due to the reasons you have said

Also agree with you Seto, there are some great looking EQ's out there.

And Zeruel, your right I don't care what the reviews say, mind you they aint saying a right lot at the momment anyhows :D

And once again, thanks for the idea Xerxes, deffinatley giving that some serious thought there.

Thanks Guys.
Back to the day job :)

how do you remove them ?

Easy Justin, just crop the EQmain.bmp image, simply slice the bars off the bottom of the pic leaving just the main eq image visable, I'll send you an example skin so you can see, that is if I can ever get in my damd mail this morning :mad:
Back to the day job :)

I once played with just cropping most of the bars out. I left just two pixels of the top row, which were easier to hide in the picture.

That allowed a two pixel high EQ slider button, which people could actually use.

It all turned out pretty funky and I never tweaked it to my satisfaction. But it's an avenue to explore...

cappy thats a really good idea u had there! but the only problem is that wen u move the sliders they sorta leave the slider bitmap where they were, but it does remove if the skin is refreshed, it think that would work well for me cuz i dont play with the sliders that much unless i have a really bad quality mp3, i usually use the presets that are included with winamp

Yeah, that's the "never tweaked to my satisfaction part". I'm sure there's an graphical way to work around it, that is, to make it look like you intended that effect, I just haven't clicked to it yet.

My solution to this particular problem is as follows, at least it is for the skin I'm working on now.......

Remove the EQ bars as normal by cropping the bitmap, however as the main part of the image dosn't obscure to many of the bars, about 4, I've drawn bars onto the main EQ window, thus giving the impression that they are there, and that the subject of the skin is standing in front of them, Ahhhh depth perception LOL.

The downside of this is, while having the impression of them being there, there is no way i can animate them, or even include a slide button on them, however I am hoping to fit a cursor in at this point that will clearly show that the bars will in fact function.

Hoping to have a pic and link up soon so you can see what this idiot is mumbling on about :)
Back to the day job :)

Oh-ho! Now you've got my brain ticking...

Gonna make a cursor that looks like an EQ slider, are you? Hmm.

Gotta get home to my reference materials, this has possibilities....

And where else can I apply that trick? Designers have been using a similar thing on the volume/balance sliders for a while now. Hmm.

LOL, well it's an idea, but consider that I've been running on machine coffee all day long and you might understand that my brains a little on the hyper side LOL,

Anyhow, see what does or dosn't happend :)
Back to the day job:)

it's all good as long as u make sure we get the link soon :)