Corel PaintShop Pro X3?

[wifesaysno]

I am thinking of doing some special repaints of a couple of different aircraft to represent the R/C ones my dad scratch built and named after his kids (myself, brother, and my little sister).
However, I have this program that came with my laptop called Corel PaintShop Pro X3. I have messed a little with using it to repaint the default Cessna. All I did was try the different painting tools, did not even try loading it in the sim.

Anyways, anyone here ever use it for repaints?

Side note:
plane named after brother: P-51D
plane named after sister: P-40E
plane named after me.....either an Air Tractor or Piper Pawnee.. my siblings got warbirds, I get an agricultural plane! I guess that explains my affinity for 'low and slow' and the 'odd ball' planes

[GlobalHobo]

I haven't used PSPx3, but my own sentiment is "use whatever works." If you're comfortable with the Corel product, use it. If you have another program you're more comfortable with, use that. I have a couple of different graphics programs on my computer, but I always end up going back to an older version of PSP. I'm not a power-user, so I don't need the latest and greatest, plus I hate the learning curve that often comes with migrating to a new product. I'm just comfortable with all the keyboard shortcuts and whatnot, and PSP serves my purposes well. The only limit I bump into is that in this older version I'm limited to 9 layers, but I can't imagine newer versions would have that limitation.

[wifesaysno]

Thank you Hobo. I know pretty much nothing about re-painting, but I am in absolutely no rush so I am going to take my sweet time doing the repaints....if I can find a Cessna AgTruck for Fs2004. I got several P-51Ds and the IRIS freeware P-40s for FS9 with a paintkit too.

[wifesaysno]

Well..I cant seem to open bitmap images in PSP X3. Is there a way to convert the textures into a different file type and then try opening that in PSP?

[Felix/FFDS]

THe FIRST thing you need to do is to get hold of an image converter..   Microsoft's own "ImageTool.exe"  is ideal for this. 

FS-X textures are *.dds bitmaps, which are not your normal format.

Convert the *.dds to say, a jpg, the use PSPX3 to do your repaint, SAVE the BASE repaint first in PSP's native format (*.pspimage) so you can go back and redo, etc etc etc.

Assuming you're using layers in your repaint, then flatten all layers (merge all visible) and save as jpg, then use imagetool.exe to reconvert as *dds


Caveat 1:  I've been out of "regular"  repainting for some time so this is a very basic summary.

Caveat 2:  I've used Paint Shop Pro since version 1 so I'm biased in its favor.

Caveat 3:  When I do a repaint, I start with a payware program (Abacus Publishing "FS Repaint!" that, being the lazy type that I am, let's me first make a renamed copy/variant of the repaint I want to do, so I don't copy over an existing (i.e. "original") texture set.

[andy190]

Felix I believe wahubna uses FS9.

The reason you can't open BMP images is because they are compressed a special way for FS. This is also true for DDS.

You should download a program called DXTBmp to open your textures & then send them from that to Paint Shop Pro.

Then after you

[Felix/FFDS]

Andy - thanks for the observation.

The "outline"  still applies.   ... ImageTool.exe can also be used, but like Andy says, dxtbmp is also an excellent program for conversions.

[wifesaysno]

Yes felix, this is for FS9 
I have FSX but I am like Fozzer, I like my trusty FS9.

Anywho, I will give that tutorial a look-see as well. Thank you for answering my questions!