Geary

'Hot stuff coming through!'

Scoring hits with classic jets.

Glad you released this one. It's a new classic.

Maneuvering for a 6-O'clock kill shot

How do you remove paint from a plane and keep the rivet and panel lines if you don't have a 'clickable' template? I can't paint. I use Photoshop CS4 and usually 'Replace Color' to effect a repaint. Very few planes accept a 'reasonable' recoloring this way. I see many beautiful skin repaints here with intact rivet/panel lines and other details and haven't been able to figure out how it's done. Hell, I can't figure out how it's done with a template. I have a feeling this isn't going to be easy, but I'd like to learn to paint skins, so ... time to bite the bullet and rip off the Sponge Bob band aid. Any help from you skinners is greatly appreciated. Geary

Sundowner, found Panel Finder. Took a bit of time and burned brain cells to figure out how to get it on the plane. Stared at all those numbers, boxes and colors for a while. My eyes crossed, and the colors started melting and flowing and waving and slowly dancing in mid-air ... I thought I was on LSD again. The only thing missing was sitar music, a paisley print shirt and bell-bottom jeans. This one's going to take some time to learn. I can only learn a small bit at a time. It may be weeks before I wake at 3 a.m. and exclaim 'Eureka!' Thanks for the heads-up on it. EricJ, I knew aligning these was going to be a bit#@. I use the ruler lines to guide me when painting parts I can't see well. Helps me to color inside the lines. Guess I'll just have to keep going back at it till I get it right. Will probably take lots of time. Thanks for the tip. Wrench, Where were you before I went on my mind-trip?

I could use some expert critique on my first attempt at painting a skin. This is from the TW F-15A template. I think it's SF1 era. I know it need lots of work. The colors don't match evenly from piece-to-piece (what a bit@# that is to do). Any hints are appreciated. I also need to find small parts that aren't painted. The template is very low viz and difficult to make out parts. I'm grateful for the texporter layer. It would also benefit from more visible rivet/panel lines and readable print on the body. Don't be bashful you master skinners. It may be my first time but you don't have to be gentle, I've a rather thick skin myself so negative criticism won't hurt my feelings so long as it's helpful. TIA, Geary

Soulfreak, I've been to simmerspaintshop often. I've learned a lot, but my attempts don't always turn out like the video tutorials there. I'm still trying to figure out how to correctly use the Mac's Remove White Photoshop plug-in filter demonstrated there. DA, I'm familiar with the 'work smarter not harder' philosophy. And being lazy by nature, I look for the easiest way to do things. But on the other hand, like you said, 'in life it takes time and practice.' Damn that practice.

FJ-1 Fury. FJ-4 Fury, TU-2 (For Korea), OH-58 (For Vietnam), Generic early radar equipped cockpit.

russouk2004, I have your P-47N. It's the first I remember I could click in the template and have a skin-in-a-minute. Great plane. I'll take another look at it's .psd anatomy. I'm taking my first steps learning the layer dance. Working on an IDF 3-tone camo scheme for the F-15 Baz. Figure it will take me about a month to complete the skin. Thanks for the suggestions and help.

Another Beauty, Dziękuję bardzo.

Beauty. Good to see it repurposed and those odd marshmallow skewers removed from the front.

Steve T, understand your suggestion about where to stack the layers, but the TW F-15 doesn't have ALL it's lines, panels, detail items on a separate layer. Still, I'll experiment with that. Blackbird, I tried GIMP years ago. If you don't have another paint program, GIMP and PAINT.NET are two good free programs, but I like (most of the time) Photoshop, as that's what I've been using for photos for years. I'll have another go at GIMP and maybe Paint.net. Maybe one or the other will work better for me. Wrench, the only reason I choose the -4 version was because it's the only one of the three I have that has an almost solid colored skin to try to recolor. I'll look in the dl section for some of your templates. The Corsair II sounds like a place to start. I'd like to see on in the French Navy Blue to match their F-8 color scheme. I've been to the simmerspaintshop. Good tuts, but don't always work for me. I did learn about a PS filter there called Mac's Remove White that should remove color but it doesn't seem to work with my Photoshop CS4/Windows 7 64-bit combination. Soooo ... back to searching for a way to remove color and keep details.... That's surprising to me. With all the wonderful painting you do I would have bet you use Photoshop or PaintShop Pro at the least.

You make it sound so easy. I have a basic understanding of layers. Still have much to learn about them. I'm experimenting with the TW F-15 template now. Not very sharp and clear but a place to start. Not much detail from what I can see. I'm trying to figure out how NOT to lose detail when I paint over something in the layer.

Kevin, I've been horribly defacing the beautiful DAT SB2C-4 Helldiver. I've been attempting to repaint it as the USAAC A-25 Shrike. The colors on the Helldiver parts are painted differently, so 'replacing' them with OD Green also comes out uneven. Unfortunately, there is no available template, but I probably wouldn't know how to use it anyway. Hence my search to learn to 'remove' color from a plane. There are many great planes out there with no templates. Original Helldiver My attempt at replacing color.

DA, How do you select and remove the colors? That was one of my fears.

Thanks, Wrench, I think I'll move this over to the skinners' forum. Required Screenshot.

Need a REAL artist to paint the Shrike. As you can see, I can't get the colors to match.

What a beauty. All four cockpits you uploaded today are works of art. They make me want to fly their respective planes just to look at the cockpits. Thanks for them.

'Mohawk Scalping Zero' 'Lancing a Zero' 'One of these is not look like the others.'

Although there were no P-40 units in Europe, Wrench did a nice little What-If BoB skin for the Tomahawk, one of my favorites. http://combatace.com/files/file/5279-eto-raf-tomahawk-mk1-bob/