Skinning

[carrick58]

I was thinking of getting into skinning, Mostly Crests to paste on the a/c or numbers, I was looking at Photo shop but don't know which edition might work best. Any Ideas ? Thanks

[FeDee]

I use Phtoshop CS4. In my opinion is the best Photoshop and it's good for medium machines.

 

Good Luck.

 

FeDee

[+RAF_Louvert]

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Carrick, I use Paint.NET which is a beautiful program and it's free. I've been using it for the last couple of years for skinning and it is ideal for the job.

 

Download link here: Paint.NET

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

 

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[UK_Widowmaker]

CS3 works for me

[+elephant]

I have a portable version of CS4, I find it very sufficient for skinning...

Edited May 7, 2011 by elephant

[Burning Beard]

I use Corel Draw.

 

Beard

[+Olham]

Carrick, all the above tips are working fine, and for the stuff you want to do, you wouldn't need Photoshop.

 

If it shall be Photoshop, any older version would be capable, if you first convert the .dds file

 

into a .bmp file. For that, you can download the free program DXTBmp here:

 

 

 

 

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/DXTBmp.shtml

 

 

 

 

 

[UK_Widowmaker]

Good advice from Olham...unless you are doing a complete reskin, PS is a bit overkill!...certainly try paintnet as advised by Lou too

[+elephant]

Carrick, all the above tips are working fine, and for the stuff you want to do, you wouldn't need Photoshop. If it shall be Photoshop, any older version would be capable, if you first convert the .dds fileinto a .bmp file. For that, you can download the free program DXTBmp here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/DXTBmp.shtml

 

If you have an NVidia card you can install the NVidia DDS plugin for Photoshop and there is no need for converters...

[carrick58]

thanks guys

[UK_Widowmaker]

If you have an NVidia card you can install the NVidia DDS plugin for Photoshop and there is no need for converters...

 

superb App, I use nothing else

[NS13Jarhead]

Try GIMP , it's an open source (i.e, free) image manipulation program very similar to Photoshop.

[carrick58]

JarHead Your the man Love Free stuff Thanks

[+RAF_Louvert]

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Ummm...Carrick...Paint.NET is free as well, and I believe I mentioned that in the third post in this thread when I provided you the link to it.

 

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[Bullethead]

The Gimp has never worked for me, primarily because I've never thought the colors came out right. I've never tried that other free thing mentioned so can't offer any advice on it.

 

I use Paint Shop Pro 7 but the Nvidia plug-in that allows work directly on DDS files only works for PSP 8 and above. Thus, I have to use DXTBmp to convert from DDS to BMP, use the BMP as the bottom layer in a PSP file where I do the real work, save that as a BMP, and use DXTBmp to convert that back to a DDS useable by the game. But at least my colors run true throughout, so I'm happy, and this process is no harder than working with any proprietary skin format that doesn't have a plug-in you can use, so I've been used to this for many years.

 

There are quite a few accomplished skinners in this forum, and there's a separate forum here at CA for OFF skinning and modding help and tips. I recommend looking through the download library of skins to see whom you think is the best, and then pester those guys with PMs until they give you their secrets :).