Tools

To theme your Android ROM, you will need a variety of tools to cover most of the modifications, and optimsations.

Graphics Software

To begin, you will need a graphics editor to be modify all the graphical resources. There are very good ones out there. Here’s a few:

-GIMP (Free)
-Adobe Photoshop (Paid)
-PaintShop Pro (Paid)

You should try and get one that can handle indexed .png files, transparency layers, and has the ability to change hues and saturations. This will allow you to very easily change the colour of icons, while keeping shades and detail (unlike the Fill tool).

When saving any .png, make sure it only has a single layer.

Draw 9-patch

Draw 9-patch comes with the AndroidSDK, you will find it in the “/tools” directory. You will need this to make .9.pngs. I will explain how these work in more detail below. Basically it is a vector format that allows stretching without any distortion or blurryness, maintaining the same edges.

apktool

apktool allows you to dismantle .apk and .jar files into smali code and resources, allowing you  to edit the decompiled .9.png’s along with bits of code that control variables such as colour of text in a certain area (e.g. notification bar). It will also allow you to build the smali code back into the .apk or .jar, and compile the decompiled .9.png files. You will need a command window or terminal for this.

See our apktool guide here : http://www.freeyourandroid.com/guide/apktool

Optipng

Optipng is a simple tool for optimising .png files in batches, making them smaller, and faster to load. You can simply just drag all the .png files you want optimised into the optipng.exe file, and it will automatically optimise them.

.zip browser

You will definitely need some sort of browser for .zip files. APK can be opened as a .zip archive. Doing so will allow you to edit the graphics without decoding and rebuilding. Windows XP and above have native support for .zip files, but you can also use programs such as 7zip and WinRAR.

ZipAlign

This is another tools that comes with AndroidSDK. It optimises the way the archive is packaged, allowing .apk files to run much more efficiently.