I was very curious about the Theme Maker for Maemo. The theme maker has been release new version 1.2.9, which supports also the Nokia N900 has been out for a while and I wanted to try making a theme. After downloading Theme Maker from the Maemo Garage section, there was no installing necessary, just unzipping the folder to the desktop. First I didn’t know how it could work, and the instructions are a little bit exhausting to read. I am also more the learning by doing type.
After getting more and more into the material I asserted that this one isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. First of all you really need an image editing software. The package includes templates with all the buttons, backgrounds, icons, etc. which can be edited, but it’s kind of complicated, because all the drafts are in just one layer. So in principle you have to make new ones because just changing or replacing colors would not lead to satisfying results. Once you have done all the creative work, the compilation process is the easy part. This is actually the program. Starting Theme Maker and pointing to the paths of the created image files, clicking the “Build” button will do the rest.
A new theme is created which can be installed on the phone. I didn’t managed it yet. It is really a lot of work to make a fine theme to personalize your device.