PhotoShop Actions Included with TB Start

For users of Adobe PhotoShop 5.0 or later, TB Start comes with some PhotoShop Actions that may help create your graphics.

While these Actions are intended to provide assistance in creating your graphics files, they are simple tools with somewhat rigid requirements for naming layers. They are not intended to take the place of an experienced graphics designer.

Loading the Actions:

A. In PhotoShop, open the Actions palette (Window, Show Actions).

B. On the Actions palette menu choose Load Actions

C. Navigate to the directory where the actions file is stored and click on the "TB Start.atn" file.

Using the Actions:

Locate the TB Start actions group at the bottom of your Actions palette.

tbstart-create tbstart shell

This action will create a plain black & white graphic with all layers intact. To run it, double-click on the action or highlight it and choose the play button at the bottom of the actions palette.

After the action is finished, it may be instructive to look at the structure of the file by viewing the layers palette.

This file may be modified to create a custom TB Start interface. However, if you want to use the other tbstart action to automatically create the graphics for you, you'll need to make sure that the following requirements are met:

1. Layers must remain separate (not merged)

2. Each layer must maintain its name exactly as named.

3. Additional layers will not be included. Any additional layers should be merged with the current layers.

tbstart-make buttons

This action will take the current PhotoShop file and create all possible graphics files needed. This action has strict requirements on the naming of the layers and on which layers are present. The easiest way to confirm that your layers are named correctly and that there aren't any extra layers is to compare your file with a file created with the other tbstar action ("tbstart-create tbstart shell").

This action merges each layer with the background, cuts out the button based on the size of the layer's "border" layer (for instance helpborder), and saves it as a separate file under the c:\tbstart-files folder.

Once the process is finished, move the files from c:\tbstart-files to the appropriate folder.

The process also creates two PhotoShop files that do not need to be distributed with your application, these are:

master.psd and

master-buttonsMerged.psd

These are your master files in case you would like to duplicate the process or modify the files at a later date.

Note: This action creates both the "run" and the "runruntime" files from the "run" layers of the original file. To create distinct "run" and "runruntime" files, you'll need to modify the bitmap files after they have been created.