Skin Overlays merged with Skins

I believe I can help you!

First, you're gonna wanna move the .package file for the skin to your Sims 4 Studio "Mods" subfolder. The path should be something like [This PC > Documents > Sims 4 Studio > Mods]. Here's an unnecessarily large screenshot to help you:



Next, you'll open up Sims 4 Studio.  Click the bubble next to Create 3D Mesh, then click CAS above that.



Use the Content drop-down menu and select Custom.  If you have other .package files in the Sims 4 Studio Mods folder, you can use the Search function or the other drop-down menus to find the exact skin you're looking for.



Scroll to the bottom row of these.  For s3m's June Skin, the overlays are all on the bottom row.  I'm not sure if their other skins are formatted this way.  Shift + Right Click on one of these skins on the bottom row to select all.  Doing this won't select the top 7 rows, which are the color versions, which you don't want.  Click Next.



Name your file.  It may be a good idea to name it after the original file--in this case, I named it "sims3melancholic_june skin" as an easy replacement--this will allow you to find the skin again easily in case you need to redownload or create a cc list using Sims 4 Tray Importer.  Really, though, name it however you want.  You can save it either directly to your Mods folder within The Sims 4 [Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > Mods] or a subfolder therein or elsewhere.  If you save it elsewhere, you will have to move it there anyway in a moment.  I save my edits to a poorly-named folder on my desktop and then copy them to Mods later.  I'm going to warn you--for this particular skin, on the next screen, it shows up on a Child Sim for some reason, which is disturbing.  I have already clicked on Swatch 6 for you for the next picture. 



If you click on any of the swatches, you'll notice that they show up as gray Overlays and not full Skins.  This is perfect.  Click Save. 



If you saved the file to your Sims 4 Mods folder [Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > Mods], you're good to boot up the game.  If not, move the .package file to this folder now.  Then boot the game.  When you're in CAS, it should look something like this:



EDIT: I think my way of doing it is the "long way" but it really doesn't take that long. I guess if you have to unmerge a lot of overlays, it probably is more time-consuming, but it does give you more control over whether or not you even want to keep all of the overlay swatches. I've not yet tried to unmerge a package, but it seems significantly quicker.

Sidenote that's somewhat relevant: Wanted to add that I totally feel you on s3m's overlays vs colors--and actually, I feel that way about a few similar/affiliated artists' skins, too. I play with a lot of Sims of Color (should I even call them that though if Sims live in a world where they can't experience oppression?) and a lot of artists' overlays are beautiful but their full-on skintones either don't go dark enough or just get undeniably weird when they're darker, almost as if they just dragged down the Lightness in Photoshop or something. I'm glad that at least these artists have come up with a way around full-blown skintones, but you're right--it does take up a lot of space in-game to work with the whole merged package.

Hi, there is no need to reclone the package—all you have to do is open it in Studio and click "remove swatch" for all except the black/white swatches, and save.

Well, all I did was click on each swatch and click "Remove" on 1-49. This was a little tedious because I had to keep selecting the first swatch each time. Then I saved once I only had the last six left.



Here is the resulting file which works fine in my game—be sure to remove the other one first because it will conflict. Good luck!