I bought a Nevo SL years ago, know how the hell do you make a transparent button again?

There already some in the Nevo library, no? I use those, and I've added more sizes by tinkering with them in Photoshop.

in nevo studio pro,
for the S70 and Q50,

under the buttons menu ,
one of the last options is transparent buttons,
comes in a bunch of diff sizes.

not sure about older software.

Thats the problem, is I fired up the software for the first time and it seems to me that half the buttons and layouts are missing. Theres nothing in the background folders at all. Which, its also not letting me add a custom background, though everything is sized right and all that.

Maybe you should go to mynevo, download the latest version of NevoStudio, and reinstall it.

It sounds like NevoStudio is pointing to the wrong folders for your gallery stuff because this has happened to me before when I was tinkering around with these settings. NevoStudio Pro has a nifty feature called "Restore Gallery Location..." (I guess enough guys did this for Nevo to actually put this into their software app, lol) that automatically points the software to the default folders.

Try doing this: Make sure you've selected your "Background Gallery" tab and then click on the "Browse..." button. When the window pops up, make sure you browse to this exact location:

C:\Program Files\Nevo\NevoStudio\Gallery\Backgrounds

That should take care of your backgrounds. If need be, do the same for the other galleries, but instead of selecting the backgrounds folder, you need to make sure you select their respective folder.

Another tip: You mentioned that you have some custom backgrounds that you want to use in NevoStudio. You should place these new pictures in their own new folder inside the "Backgrounds" folder.

I hope this helps.

If you have Photoshop, you can just create a new file, blank with a transparent background with the size/shape you need. Then save it in the galleries section, where ever you have your files, as a PNG file. It will then be a transparent button.