Becoming a repainter.. have questions

[Virtual_Pilot]

Hey,

I am planning on becoming a repainter along with being a modeler, but I already made a post about that. I plan on repainting airliners for FSX and a little FS9. Primarily Northwest and Southwest. No one makes the new colors anymore, I really hate the Gray and Red color for Northwest planes, and the old Southwest color is okay, but the new color is just way cool. I have to look at those colors in my AI traffic, and it looks like we are in the old days. So I said, "Hey, I should take it into my own hands and become a repainter!" I have some questions.


I use paint.NET, and want to know if I should really buy the Adobe software. It's called PaintShop, right?
How much does it cost? Is it really worth it, or should I use paint.net?

I have seen this "Abacus Repaint Studio". I have never seen anyone say that they have used it to do a repaint, is it hidden gold that no one ever bothers to go get? Or is it trash?

For some planes, like this freeware Ctation X, then if you only paint a single side of the fuselage and it gets mirrored and messes up text, then is there a way to fix it? I made this repaint of it that is supposed to be a private jet for a few of the players on the St. Louis Cardinals, but the logo got messed up on one side.

Are there any guides out there that actually tell you how to REPAINT IT, not talk and talk and TALK about putting little details on the plane, like dirt and water spots, and little stories about their life? Or is the art of repainting just kept a secret?


Thanks,
Virtual_Pilot

[Puchu]

I have paint shop pro loaded in my laptop. I recently lost the cd ( think it got thrown away by accident).. so I can't load it up on my desktop. So I've been playing around with paint.net on the desktop.

Paint.net is missing some valuable tools that makes things a million times more difficult. (the point-to-point mask selection to be more specific) All it has is this freehand selector, square selector, and round selector. So when I'm trying to outline a piece of a wing, I cant just click one point, move mouse to next point, click, move again and click.. and walla.. I have a perfect outline of the wing. Instead I have to freehand it which always turns out horrible. (maybe there is an addon for this that I havn't found?.. anybody?)

I'm having troubles in paint.net getting use to how the different layers work as well. In paintshop pro, I can make a new layer, outline a wing, then magic bucket inside the wing on the new layer.. not only will it stay within my outline.. but it will also trace around things.. like windows. In paint.net.. the bucket just fills the outline in a complete opaque color. Doesn't trace around windows or anything like that.
I'm probably just not doing something right. I picked right up on it in paintshop.. it's not so obvious how to do it in paint.net.

So I may be buying a new copy of paintshop soon. (the one I have is about 7 years old anyways) Unless I can dig up some addons or figure out how to get paint.net to work as I would like.