Most popular (or most frequently used) graphics editor for FSX repaints ???

Back in the FS9 days, I used Martin Wright's DXTbmp, but that was probably 12 years ago. Photoshop is dreadfully difficult (for me), all those layers to be manipulated and hard-to-find tools they provide.

 

All those years ago, I managed one repaint using COREL Photo-Paint-- relatively simple compared to Photo-Shop and Paint Shop Pro.

 

I would appreciate any constructive input from our simming community.

 

Thank you!

 

bushp04

I am no photo editor in any way, shape or form. I have all the artistic talent of a small rock, actually. But I hear a lot recommend Irfanview, and Photo-shop. Irfanview IS freeware, too, so you can see how it works for you. If you don't like it, no harm, no foul.

 

The numerous layers are what painter use to make such fantastic paints these days. I would advise you, if you're going to be using the paintkits, or just modding existing paints, to learn to use them. You'll need to eventually!.

A place to look for tutorials or advice is the FSDeveloper forums. They have one dedicated to aircraft paints in particular, and there's a ton of of good info in it. They can be a little slow to answer questions, or posts, but they WILL answer eventually. Their advice is some of the best available out there.

 

Good luck to ya!

Pat☺

If you're a PC user (as opposed to Mac), then i can recommend the (free) Paint.net, which is very similar in capabilities to what Photoshop can do, but has a slightly less daunting interface. You can find it here:

 

https://www.getpaint.net/index.html

 

Despite the fact that I am an Adobe Certified Expert Trainer who has taught pretty much every Adobe program there is professionally for years - including Photoshop obviously - I still do use Paint.net quite often in preference to Photoshop as it tends to handle DDS files better than Photoshop does and it can open .psd files just as well as PS can. DXTbmp is still occasionally useful to have around for creating or converting various files too incidentally, so don't dismiss that either.

 

And I sympathise with you incidentally; in my opinion, Adobe have in recent years tried to add too many features to Photoshop, which has made it bloated and confusing when it used to be a very elegant image editing program. Yes it has far more capabilities than it used to have, but that has made it a very daunting program to get started on learning, and that is something they should have been aware of. I know this because over the years, introductory courses I teach on PS have become a much more arduous affair than they used to be.

Thanks, Pat. I noticed the other day some of my saved pictures (.bmp's, I believe), like, say, thumbnails in some

downloaded aircraft, were showing up as Irfanview's. That, coupled with your response jogged my memory about Irfanview being a good graphics manipulator, probably at least as good as Windows Paint. Plus, as you mentioned FREE!

Thanks for your response!

Chock, Good response about Paint.net--I really appreciate the link. Paint.net looks at least as robust as COREL's Photo-Paint. Given your experience as an Adobe trainer, I wonder how you think PhotoShop Elements stacks up against the full suite of CS6? --Thanks again

Photoshop Elements is geared toward tweaking photos rather than creating stuff from scratch, i.e. it has things like removing camera shake, red eye, let's you sort out dodgy exposure etc, so it isn't an especially good choice if you were looking at using it for creating liveries for FS aeroplanes and you'd very quickly find it wasn't up to the tasks you'd demand of it. But read on for another suggestion...

 

Strictly speaking, the best Adobe program for creating liveries for FS aeroplanes isn't even Adobe Photoshop, it's actually Adobe Illustrator, which is kind of obvious given that it is designed for creating graphics whereas Photoshop is really at its heart designed for tweaking existing images, but again, Illustrator ain't free and can be a bit tricky to learn, although once you get good with any program which allows you to create bezier-based vector graphics (which is Illustrators forte, and you know how to use that stuff, it becomes very easy to create complex shapes and designs accurately.

 

In fairness, Photoshop will allow you to create vector graphics with a bezier pen tool, so it's not completely ineffective for graphics creation, but Illustrator is fully geared towards that kind of thing as it is its main purpose, so Illustrator (or an alternative to it) is worth considering if you want to recreate or design your own liveries. With that in mind, you might want to take a look at this program (it's free) and is a decent alternative to Adobe's Illustrator:

 

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/inkscape-editor

Chock,

Thanks much for your post! I've been subscribed to an Elements class on yt, which has IMHO a very good instructor, and I'm just now getting the hang of it...but, as you said, it, like it's Momma CS6

is geared toward photo touch up.

 

A few Christmases ago I received as a gift from our son a Bamboo pen tool/drawing tablet. However,

at that time I was using Mac (my Windows XP had just died after many blissful years of service).

Presently I'm using Windows 7 Pro (64-bit). I wonder if the Bamboo pen and tablet will work on repaints in FSX?

 

Thanks also for sending the techradar link as well.

 

Best,

bushp04

Chock,

Thanks much for your post! I've been subscribed to an Elements class on yt, which has IMHO a very good instructor, and I'm just now getting the hang of it...but, as you said, it, like its (not it's) Momma CS6

is geared toward photo touch up.

 

A few Christmases ago I received as a gift from our son a Bamboo pen tool/drawing tablet. However,

at that time I was using Mac (my Windows XP had just died after many blissful years of service).

Presently I'm using Windows 7 Pro (64-bit). I wonder if the Bamboo pen and tablet will work on repaints in FSX?

 

Thanks also for sending the techradar link as well.

 

Best,

bushp04

 

 

its