angles pixelation help

looks like you're not using anti-aliasing..........I'm not famaliar with either program but someone will probably come along who is.

Well that is my main problem...LOL...I am not very familiar with either one, I am learning them as I go. I thought about an anti-aliasing but the only place I can find an option for that is in the bevel/emboss gloss options. and it does nothing for the edge of the image, only for the gloss highlight applied.

all I know is I got something wrong, or am not applying something. There is deffinately a way of doing it or everything you see with angles would be pixelated.

Actually, I'm having a very similar problem with one of mine.  The top of my start menu is going to be a curve like this:

When I paste it here, it looks fine, except for a tiny bit of aliasing on the curve.  When it's applied on my skin, though, it tends to get the jaggies like yours.  I haven't been able to figure out what it is, but I'm starting to think it has to do with my computer not displaying transparencies correctly.  The curve is actually several horizontal pixel rows of varying opacities, because of the way Photoshop converts from a vectored pen shape to a pixel selection shape, and it seems that either my computer or WB is simplifying the transparencies to the extent that they change more abrubtly.

The system info tab for my WB has the following:

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 6.3 (build 69 x86)

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC
WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC
Your machine supports per pixel borders on WindowBlinds skins.

(Plug and Play Monitor) 1 is attached to NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300

Wblind.dll         2008/10/31 14:23:20
Wbsrv.dll         2008/09/22 16:59:42
Wbconfig.exe         2008/11/18 15:02:54
Wbload.exe         2008/04/26 15:14:14
Wbhelp.dll         2008/04/26 15:14:07
Wbui.dll         2008/04/26 15:14:05
Tray.dll              2008/04/26 15:14:21
Screen.exe         2008/07/15 10:31:09

Any ideas, anyone?  I've tried taking apart skins that had curved edges (like Jester382's Neovision: https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=6648&libid=1 which was actually the inspiration for some parts of this skin) but couldn't find anything that he had done differently.

Okay, blackcurtain, I think I may have figured it out, but I'm not sure.

I thought I had already done this at least once, but on a hunch I saved the image as a 32-bit .tga (I think they had all been png's before that) and it seems to have lost the jaggies for me.  Very strange, but it looks to be a flaw in the conversion from png to tga within Skinstudio.

I'm going to do a little more testing later, and I'll get back to you.

-Asp

Unless your expererinced in using PS, I would recommend using 45 degree angles for interface work, straying from them will require a lot more work to maintain a smooth look.

layer style strokes and glows, beveling and shadows can help you compensate for the jaggies on non traditional angles and shapes but will only help so much in my experience.

I think maybe your right. the orginal image I posted above was only a temp to show how bad I was getting pixealted. I tried several variations of similar shapes and kept getting it. so I decided that since it is my first skin and learning PS at the same time I would simplify it an just go with the original default shape of a flat top with rounded corners. this helped but I was still getting very pixelated on my rounded corners. was trying anything I could think of, reading tutorials on rounded corners with glaussan blur, alpha channels etc...

in the end I remade the rounded corner image 3 or 4 times, each end result had varying degrees of pixelation though the image size and rounded corner size was the same, suddenly with one remake I had no pixelation. (maybe it was that degree and contour thing that vStyler mentioned, I thought I had kept them the same but with so many remakes who knows, maybe I just got lucky and chose the right combo of angles,contours and highlighting.)

So I too concluded that it was a result of or combination of (in no certain order)

a: my system not rendering transparency well

b: SKS not converting .png to .tga well and losing some of the transparency (though I had the same problem when trying to save the image as .tga rather than .png

c: my very basic knowledge of PS and not knowing what to do to fix the problem.

Funny though the StartMenu Top part is the only image I have had the problem with so far. thus until I learn houw to fully utilize the incredible power of PS, I may find myself remaking images to solve transparency problems