Several things you need to notice. The name Eurowings does not cover the texture completely, if you think it does then look at the very top of the texture real close. Now you see that there is a little bit of the letter S clipped off. We want to do this right so by closely inspecting the texture you know that there must be a little bit of an S waiting to be swiped off another texture block. You can find that yourself. OK, continuing with things to notice, there is also a gradient from dark to light, left to right, there is windows and doors that we don't want to remove.

When I first started to paint I had no idea that you could use layers. Layers is what gives you the ability to drop a transparent screen over your image to paint on. If you make a mistake you just clear your mistake or delete the layer without damaging your base image. For us the base image is our original texture. The only thing we will be removing from the base image is the name. Please note where the end of the text is and it's orientation BEFORE you delete it. You will be adding a name wont you? Good idea if you ask me.

Before you go near your texture and blow it to pieces, I want you to look at the bottom right of Paint Shop Pro: Do you see the image size. It is 256 x 256 x 256 colours bitmap. No matter what you do to the image always make sure it is at this size when you save it to use in FS2000.. Why? Because that's what the image was when you started. Put it back the way you found it and you will have no problems. Project Opensky for example are using 1024 x 1024 x 256 textures on their excellent 767-400ER. Check the size of the file as well. Here it is 65 Kbytes. For yours to work, in FS2000, it needs to be the same. This is a good measure to tell if you have not saved the file correctly. If it is bigger or smaller than what you started with then you have done something wrong. Know what you are working with before you mess around with it. OK enough of the lecture.

Increase the Colour Depth

I want you to go to the top menu bar and select 'colors'. From there go down and increase the colour depth to 16 Million (24 Bit). Important: Choose 'save as" and save it as a PSP format image. Check the bottom right of Paint Shop Pro again, see the difference?

If you don't increase the colour depth then you will not be able to use layers and if you don't save as a PSP format file then you will erase the original bitmap. By creating a PSP format file for us to work on and keeping a BMP format means we will always have a working texture to mess around with. i.e. the PSP file. If you want to use the texture on the aircraft to view your hard work, then, drum role please......no surprise here......change it back to 256 colours and save it as a BMP. If you do this before you save it as a PSP file and lose your layers then just press CTRL+Z and it will take you back a step. From there save as PSP and you will maintain your layers.

Time to actually do something

Jump into Paint Shop Pro and we will start off with deleting the old name and adding our own. In my case I will be adding 'Celtic World Airways'. Note the font you use as well as the size, colour etc. Reason behind this, is standardisation. If you are painting a fleet you will want to keep the same colours, fonts etc. throughout.

I have zoomed in close to the bottom of the text on the left side of the texture, as shown on the right. You may be able to see on this image that there is a gradient that runs in line with the text. What I mean by that is that if you follow the text from the top of the texture down there is slightly different shades of white that runs parallel to the text. Look at your own image and you will see it is darker on the left and lighter on the right. That is the "gradient". We don't want this to change so we will copy the texture block below the text and run it up the length of the text, thereby replacing the text with the gradient.

Use the selection icon to select the area shown surrounded by the dotted line on the right. Don't copy the windows or go to far beyond the edges of the text, but make sure that you take enough texture to cover any capitalised letters or letters with tails, such as y or g, etc.

Press CTRL + C to copy the selection then CTRL + E to paste as a new selection. Move your mouse over the text and line it up with the surrounding gradient. Try and get it as close as possible but remember you will be adding your own text over the top of this so don't panic if you don't get it 100%. Do CTRL + E again and paste above the last part you did. Carry on pasting your gradient until all the text is covered. We need to do this all over again for your text on the right hand of the image. If you use the same selection of gradient as before, chances are it will look fine, but for the sake of practice repeat the process, from the beginning. Remember how much of the font is showing, rough size, and orientation prior to removing it. When you have finished you will have a nice clean image ready for you own name and colour scheme.

Now, I hear you all ask "how can you put the name on the aircraft texture before putting on the base colours". That's a very good question. The answer is we use layers. If you read the previous parts you will know I mentioned layers before. If you didn't, shame on you for skipping any part of this tutorial.

If you have not used layers before you are in for a big surprise. When I first started, I used to paint directly on top of the original texture. Any mistakes had to be removed pixel by pixel until I had the image back the way it was before I could move on. Instead of thinking of your texture as a flat canvas with only one surface, think of it as many sheets of transparent paper, one on top of the other. You choose a layer to "paint" on and as long as you don't use the same layer for all your painting you maintain all the other layers images. You can view them all at once or as many as you want. We will use layers in a big way throughout this tutorial. But that's next time. I want to get this out to press now so you all have something to work on. Until next time. Good luck and Good painting.

Next update: Adding your first layers and putting on your name and adding night textures. Yes, at this early stage we will be adding the night textures.

See you next time. Jim Oates