While waiting for WYSIWYG skin editor to be developed I know many skinners are eager to try their luck in skinning Aston2 (Aston2 Menu or Aston2 Panels) . So while waiting why not give it a try. Some other time I’ll get into skinning itself but for now let’s see what we need.

1. Solid knowledge of file operations such as copying, working with archives etc. Also help of some file manager can be useful too. There are several really good shareware file managers such as Total Commander or Directory Opus , also there is quite a number of pretty  solid free managers such as FreeCommander or SE-Explorer. File managers can save lot of time and effort so I suggest you should use one.
   
2. Good text editor. Notepad is cool but what you need is something that supports syntax highlighting (line numbering, good search and replace…). Most likely you will want to edit Aston2 skin xml file(s) so good editor is a must. In my opinion best freeware text editor is Notepad++ , if you want to spend money and  buy  some shareware text editor (which you don’t need really) I suggest you to try  UltraEdit or EmEditor.
3. Good piece of graphic editing software of course. It is your choice but the best are Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, CorelDraw and maybe few more but that is it. Free graphics editors are in my opinion limited and there are only few decent free apps, I have seen people performed miracles using Gimp though. There is no ultimate and best app ever there is only the one that suits you more than the other. No matter what is your weapon of choice making skins is demanding task and the more you learn and know the better the skins you’ll produce.  Skinning is good playground for learning but since you are interested in making skins for Aston2 I assume you have at least some experience in using this kinds of tools.
4. If you are familiar with HTML, XML,CSS that is a plus for sure but it is not necessary.

On some other occasion (which will be soon I hope) I’ll dive into the very process of making Aston2 skins. Don’t be discouraged if this sounds too serious once you get started things will seem much easier.