Customising splash image of QGIS

Where can I find the splash image which is shown while starting QGIS, and how to customise it?

I am developing a GIS software for myself based on QGIS, but I don't want to just start anew with QGIS's include and lib as it cost much time and energy. Instead, with the QGIS interface, I can pay more attention to create my own algorithms and add them to QGIS as plugins like sextante. Yet,I got my favoured bgimage before and still want to use it in this software I am developing.

Answer

Starting from QGIS 1.8, you have to compile QGIS yourself if you want a different splash screen, as discussed on the mailing list:

On 20 July 2012 17:59, Nathan Woodrow wrote:

It doesn't exist on the file system after QGIS is installed, it is compiled into the application.

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For QGIS <= 1.7 Building custom QGIS installers for Windows describes

Customising the Splash Screen

The splash screen master can be found here: images/splash/splash.xcf.bz

Once again, you can open this directly in the gimp and edit it according to your needs. When you are ready to save the final splash, resize it to 600×287 pixels first. Be careful to also preserve the transparency in the corners properly or otherwise you will see artifacts when you start QGIS which won’t look nice. The saved splash should be saved as: images/splash/splash.png