i'd say since 2of3 is running vista in the screenies, it'll be vista ready

Ok. While I have the attention of both The V-Man and the Brain:

I sent this skin to someone to test. I know she always has a lot of content on her start panel and I wanted to see how the gradient looked streached.

It seemed very stripey

I have tried any number of streaching/tiling margin combos whithout success.

Have I drawn the image too small so that it streaches badly when applied (238x317) or is there some magic setting combo that I haven't tried?

/me tries to figure it out without looking at the user icon 

20f3 the skin is lookin wonderful...ill wear it

Slight gradients over black typically cause issues with banding Tim, really the best way to combat it is draw it a bit bigger and\or put your sizing margins very close to one another.

Another trick is to add a sprinkle of photoshop noise (Gaussian and monochromatic)... just very slight.. it can mask the banding a bit for you.

Also.. rasterizing your panels first and drawing the gradients with the gradient tool as opposed to a layer style gradient can produce results with less banding sometimes.

Hope this helped.

Looking pretty cool Tim!!

Exactly.I just did that before reading this, John! Drawing the gradient on the shape and then adding the other effects gave it a smooth look with no stripes.

I'll re slice and whack it in

Thanks!

Thank you Harley

Hope ur not doing that in public

Working on a wallpaper

I'm unsure about the gleam on the globe. It seems wrong somehow Is it the shape, the gradient, the color?

I'm not afraid to show my ignorance publicly, so advice and pointers would be appreciated

Call the wb ..Black Hole Sun

How does it look w/o?

Perhaps decreasing the minor axis (up-down) and extending it to the border of the yellow and dark gray?

Also...a very small shift to the right.

2of3...Fade it out as it gets to the bottom.. and mabe a bit smaller.

somthing like this..   or  

to one side...

I'd suggest googling some orbish, glass images.. look at some natural lighting.. right now its pretty standard as far as reflections go, definately fade the reflection at some point.

Good stuff!

Thanks guys........ I'm getting one on one help from BoXXi on the IRC as I write this

If you have CS4 use the 3D menu sphere primitive to get 3 point lighting.

CS3 (not extended)

GREAT!

Now I can't get that song out of my mind

Love the Colors

great wall 2of3...will look terrific up with the blind...matching the start button.....

This is looking freakin sweet.  This is a must have.  Love the orbs and the colors.  

2of3 i think i found the answer mate..

you need to put some innner shadow up from the bottom of the orb to balance out the light at the top...

see here...

Hope this helps mate.....