How do I give professional look and feel to my .NET windows application?

Question

I'm using WINFORMS not WPF.

I just know basic c# .net gui programming. I donot want the traditional windows look. I want to have my own custom look (eg. gtalk, antivirus softwares, media players, google chrome).

Actually I'm inspired by google's PICASA software. Its awesome. I want to do something like that.How can I do that? If there is something I should learn please point me.

Also I may have to write my own custom controls (like modified tree view etc..) I guess. Please give some good learning resources.

Answer 1

This article describes how to draw custom windows. The author also shows how to draw non-rectangular windows.

If you could use WPF instead of Windows Forms, this is a good article about customizing window drawing:
http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/.net/net_wpf/article.php/c16379/

There is also a question with some good answers here on SO: Creating custom forms in WPF?

Update:
I think that skinning and custom drawing is fun to do from a programmers perspective, but I also think that there is almost no benefit for the user.
The creators of the platform you are developing for might have put a lot of effort into the design of their windowing toolkits.
If you just want to change some visual aspects of your application you also should take into account that you might miss some important other aspects of UI design:

• consistency
• accessibility
• aesthetics (if you are overdoing effects, gradients, ...)
• internationalization
• ...

As you are developing for Windows, you also lose the skinning ability of the OS itself. And I think that some of the skins that come with newer versions of Windows are pretty good.