I admit that the wording here could be better, so I can see how you got confused.
The author of the theme is simply suggesting that if you would like to make your FM art appear as though it had a transparent backdrop, to paste your FM-Art/station logo onto the background provided.
You would still need to do a lot of manual editing to achieve this "transparent" effect, though.
And it makes no mention of how to use FM art properly, but I guess the author assumes a user will either look into this themselves, or already know how to do so.
You will still need to have an image with the same name as the preset that you want the art displayed for in your presets directory for FM art to work. The author of the theme is just suggesting to use the file fm-backdrop.bmp as a basis to work from if you would like the illusion of transparency.
Simply editing fm-backdrop.bmp and leaving it as is will do no good, as that file is never actually called by them theme at all.
For FM art to work the artwork to be displayed must share the same name as the preset it is to be displayed for, and be found in the presets directory.
EDIT: You mention both the SMART and SMARTie themes, this is only relevant for the SMART theme, the file fm-backdrop.bmp does not exist in the SMARTie theme.
It should also be noted that messing around with this backdrop file is not necessary at all in order to get FM art functioning in the .fms for either the SMART, or SMARTie, (or any) themes.
[St.]