Customize XP

Customize XP's Default Images, Buttons, Bars, etc

Systems Properties Box, Logon Screen, and others

See also www.virtualplastic.net is a fantastic site that explains many Windows modifications for all sorts of default images and other tweaks.

IMPORTANT - many sites that describe this process insist that your image must be 8-bit indexed bmp (256 colors) - but you can use full 24-bit color for your bmp images for many of the integrated bitmaps !!! However, you will need 8-bit (256 color) images if you want to use transparency. In all cases, use BMP files, not GIF's.

go to http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/hacklist.html for a huge list of customizable files for all versions of Windows

32-bit Images

XP adds some images inside files with an alphablending like behaviour (IE and explorer toolbars etc). That means these bitmaps are 32 bits per pixel, 24 bits for full colors, adding 8 bits to have an alpha channel defining transparency regions. As opposed to bitmaps that are less 24 bit or less, most editors (or least free ones) don't support 32bit bitmaps, making them harder to edit. To complicate things more, the files responsible show up and are extracted as plain 24-bit .bmp's by the resource editors. But to solve this, all we have to do is:

Make a 24bit verson of the bitmap you want to use (include a "mask" color that represents the background color, usually magenta (rgb 255 0 255).
Turn it into a 32bit using this 24 to 32 bit converter.

Note: two versions are included with the converter - one takes your 24bit bitmap and turns one color (the "mask" color I was taliking about) to transparent, leaving the others opaque. The other "combines" the 24bit bitmap with another bitmap that contains the transparency information as shades of gray (black being fully transparent and white being fully opaque).

Here's another workaround:

First, load the extracted bitmaps in the image editor of your choice. Save them right after that as .png (a format capable of displaying 32-bit images, 24-bit for full colors, adding 8-bit to have an alpha channel defining transparency regions).
Second, figure out how to create/manipulate the transparency layer in your editor, and save it.
Finally, open in MS Paint and save as .bmp. Bitmap will still be 32-bit. Somehow, this doesn't work with every tool. Tools like Irfanview just assume a .bmp can only be 24-bit and save as such, which is understood. But there's other tools that save as 32-bit, but the images produced still render the files they're placed in broken (so backup)...