what do you do to work fast when making themes?

so I just spent like 4 hours on one FX button and I'm still not done. is there some tricks you guys use to work fast when themeing?

lotsa caffeine

You probably do this already but, use layers for non destructive editing. I always keep the buttons base picture furthest down in the layer list, then I add one folder each for all of the symbols I'm going to use (io,fx,mute etc.) Kinda basic but it does work.

learn keyboard shortcuts for Inkscape - wot Limeflavor said about layers, you only need the one button background - group three together so you can copy and move them easy, things like that. It's all about workflow I took about two weeks to do my first theme and it was quite shabby. Now I can do most of the work in three or four hours - getting the colours just right still takes time though

sadly... inkscape will not work on my mac. it crashes a lot. which is weird considering I have osx 10.5.6 and the newest version of X11... I'm sure Illustrator will do? yes? why vector programs in the first place? why not photoshop?

as said, working in vectors makes the process much faster after you learn the basics. I can work at a quick pace in Inkscape, when it decides to behave (it is heavily bug-riddled, and crashes much too often for comfort). A couple tools like ConversionSVG (for easy batch conversions to png) and the Renesis explorer plugin (to view SVGs as thumbnails in windows explorer) also help boost my work process.