Making Your Own PS3 Themes For Free

If you have the an image editor, a text editor, an USB drive, and a PS3... You are on your way to making your own PS3 themes! Sounds simple enough right?

To start off you'll need to download a compiler that Sony offers free of charge (The file is compressed, so you'll need a program like 7zip to uncompress it). You can find the official download on the PS3 site here (Look for "PS3 Custom Theme Toolbox (Zip)" and click).

Once unzipped, you'll be able to find a sample theme located in PS3_CustomThemeToolbox\p3tcompiler_v101\sample\01. I recommend making a copy of the 01 folder renaming it 02. The sample.xml file, located in the new 02 folder, contains all the information used by the compiler to generate the theme. Here you can change author information, language settings, and all of the locations of the images used in your theme using a text editor like Notepad.

Backgrounds are jpegs. You should have at least two backgrounds, one for HD (1920x1080) and one for SD (640x480) resolutions. All of the other images used in the theme are png files. I suggest using an image editor like Gimp or Paint.net to edit the images that come with the theme.

Now that all your images are edited and your xml file is saved, you can now compile the files into a single theme file. Simply drag your xml file and drop it on the p3tcompiler.exe file located in PS3_CustomThemeToolbox\p3tcompiler_v101. This will open a command prompt that will generate your theme file which will be saved in the same folder your xml and image files are located.

Your newly created p3t file can now be moved to your USB drive to be installed on your PS3. On your USB drive create a folder called PS3, inside that folder create another called THEME. Copy the p3t file to the theme folder (Example: E:\PS3\THEME\sample.pt3).

Take your USB drive and plug it in to the PS3. Go to Settings> Theme Settings> Theme> Install. Chose the USB drive and chose the theme. The theme is now installed and will be available from the Theme options. Select the theme and then select Apply.

Here is an example of a Theme I have created. The theme is provided free of charge below the video.

Download Theme

U.T.P. Theme for PS3 (123)