Turns out it was Fonts & System Metrics > BTNFACE:COLOR and  BTNTEXT:COLOR after all.  I guess I changed them to black and white at some point before, but I don't remember doing so. I changed them to just a bit off of black and white, and the normal UI came back. Thanks!

Right, well I'm basically trying to get Paint back to normal. Here's a picture with a few of the parts I don't care for: https://www.flickr.com/photos/55597373@N02/14452963966/

And this is how it should look: https://www.flickr.com/photos/55597373@N02/14289477768/in/photostream/

I'm wondering where the images are located that control the ribbon tabs, orange button highlights, etc. 

Here's how Paint looks:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/55597373@N02/14473440294/

How do I insert images to a post? When I click the insert image icon to reply, it just adds "[img][\img]". 

I managed to figure it out right soon after I posted. I figured out that I had to select the area I wanted to keep visible, save that selection, and apparently that's it. It was actually pretty simple.

I was finishing up a theme, and when i opened up MS Paint, it apparently turned into an ugly mess of bits and pieces of my theme. It looked pretty terrible (much worse than my actual theme). I opened up a similar theme, and Paint looked normal. I guess I changed too many images in WSB, but I couldn't find the ones that would've affected Paint.

Help?

I'm making a Windows 7 theme, and as a flat, metro-inspired theme, it's not very complex. With that said, I couldn't find any ExplorerFrame.dll's from other themes that would match this one. I'm trying to make my own explorer buttons, but it's apparently more complicated than I thought. I know how to extract and save the bitmaps from the dll and everything. The issue is actually creating the images themselves in photoshop. I don't know how to keep some parts of the button (i.e., everything but the arrow) translucent while keeping the arrow opaque white. I've heard terms like "alpha channel" and "alpha layer" thrown around when I was googling this, but I don't really know anything about that. All I got out of the few tutorials on alpha channels was that it's a way to save selections. That doesn't even seem relevant. When I tried to re-insert my bmp into the dll, I got a floating point error.  Anyway, what I'm going for is a translucent blue square with an opaque white arrow in the middle.

Help, or even a tutorial, would be really appreciated!