Proper PNG editing for theming

For those who are having trouble editing themes and some of your icons are coming out distorted. Example would be a rectangle icon or frame that looks oval when applied on your droid.

The reason is a .9.png is DIFFERENT from a .png file
A .9.png is a visually compressed icon meaning in photoshop or any photoviewer or paint software it looks like a rectangle, BUT when android renders it that same icon may become a much bigger square or elongated rectangle. The reason is to save space on the device a smaller png file thats visually "stretched" when displayed on the droid instead of a full size icon file with uses more space.

Once you edit a .9.png in a editor and resave it the .9.png loses its stored "patchwork" and it must be repatched and by this i mean not software patching but visually patched by setting grids.

here is a tutorial its easy but time consuming and the youtube.apk editing alone took me 3 hours to re color, repatch, and recompile as you cant just repatch the png and insert ut once patchd it gets run through eclipse ide and recompiled and exports another apk in which you extract your finished product place in your own apk file an push to your device.

How to edit .9.pngs - xda-developers
its not for the weak at heart.

Can't you just open the apk in winrar, extract the app_icon.png, edit it, throw it back into the rar, and reinstall the apk?

*.png files yes those which are *.9.pngs no they lose their shape and stretching dimensions

Not for the faint of heart. You crack me up! ;) I guess it's better than answering a million questions from people who have no business making an attempt though.