kxstudio theme problems

[tatch]

I want to use the kxstudio theme but there are a number of issues that prevent me from doing so:

-it's so dark that I often can't see any dividers or buttons
-I think there are literally no sliders?? see http://postimg.org/image/hkqi84cbf/full/
-again from that picture, a lot of icons seem to be missing?
-the spacing also seems strange, e.g. http://postimg.org/image/cyel9dzfx/full/ the text background for the left tabs seems too small, it should be bigger than the text and the grey padding should be smaller. Also the text on the right is very squished together which makes it look awkward and difficult to read

I am also unsure of how to actually set the theme consistently throughout my os. I have unity-control-center, unity-tweak-tool, gnome-tweak-tool, lxappearance, and qtconfig-qt4 and they all have different settings. I surely don't need all of those so which one should I use to set the global theme?

Finally, what is involved in the process of editing a theme? I would be willing to take a stab at it but I don't know where to start. I am pretty comfortable with css, is it similar to that?