Functionality. This is a very important part of good theming!

Those that know me also know that I nag about this all the time and there's a
very good reason for it. If the theme isn't functional it isn't useable!

The theme may look good at first glance but when you start using it on your phone you'll notice the problems..

So what is functionality? Useability or readability are other words for the same thing and describes it better.
It's a way to describe that all functions are considered and all areas are readable in the theme.

The most common mistake is to use a background image in the navigation screens with high contrasts
between dark and bright bits in the image. I will use an extreme example to illustrate this.

The original 240x320 image on the left and the same pic inserted in Theme Creator:

As you can see the text isn't very readable anywhere and until it is this theme will not be finished.

So we'll get going with the process of making this image better suited for a theme.

Paint Shop Pro 9 is what I use for this but you can use any graphic software and
the steps will be similar.

 

We open our graphics software and open the original image:

First we'll select the skull part of the image.
For that we use the magic wand:

To be sure we get every last bit of the white into the selection we will have to use a very wide tolerance.
I used these settings:

The result will be this:

Add a new layer:

Just OK the box that follows.

No we'll add a gradient for the skull. I will pick a fading black gradient so I turn to the Materials-box.
Click the foreground color:

This box opens:

Click the tab "Gradient" and see if you can find a black/white or fading black gradient.
Pick it and don't forget to set the style of gradient before clicking OK. I picked a sunburst gradient.
Don't forget to check that the "texture"-box in unchecked!

Now we use the fill-tool to get the gradient onto our skull:

Left-click on the skull to fill the gradient and you will get this:

So much better already but don't remove the selection just yet as we'll do a little more..

Duplicate the new layer by right-clicking on the layer in the layer-box:

Now we'll add a neat little effect to the skull.

There's millions of plug-in's for Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop but to make sure
you have the same as I do, I will only use filters that comes with PSP.

I picked Fine Leather:

With these settings:

The result:

There! Much better and now you remove the selection:

Only one step to go!

Add a new layer!

Go to the Materials-box, click the foreground color, pick the "Color"-tab
and choose a black color:

Use the fill-tool again and it will give you this:

We now have 4 layers.
The first layer has the original image,
the second layer is the black gradient in the skull,
the third is the duplicated layer with the leather effect added
and the fourth is an all black layer.

Now we just adjust the opacity on the top-layer to get the skull to shine through.
I reduced ut to 30 with the slider next to the layer:

The result:

Now we just need to check if it works in Theme Creator.

The difference is quite visible:

This is perfectly fine for a theme but you could make it even more readable by reducing
the opacity even more but this is just to show the process which I hope I could get
understandable and above all, I hope the point of this tutorial got through! :-)

/dr_megabyte @ mobile9.com