Tutorials:Beginning Theming/Before You Begin

Required Tools
In order to get ready to create themes, you will want several types of programs that will aid you through creating content to assemble into your theme!

There are three major categories of tools you'll need.

Graphics Editor
A program capable of editing or creating images, or graphics. Examples of these are:
 * Adobe Photoshop
 * Corel Paint Shop Pro
 * The GIMP

Audio Editor
A program capable of editing or creating streams of audio, or music. Examples of these are:
 * FL Studio
 * Audacity

Text Editor
A program capable of editing and creating text files. Examples of these are:
 * Notepad, GEdit, Kate, or TextEdit: Your default text editors!
 * SciTE
 * Notepad++

Graphics and Text, ironically, will be the meat and potatoes of what you will be working with in StepMania whilst theming, with Audio complimenting that. Graphics will be dictated and placed by what you create with a myriad of text files, much like a blueprint.