Hi all,I still keep on to FS2004 and I would like to make repaints for MD11.Untill now I have painted with Microsoft Paint and have quite a good grasp of the use of that program. However, with the Paintshop Pro or Photoshop I have only little experience through some trial versions years ago.As the making of repaints for MD11 requires one of the two latter programs I am thinking of giving this a try.Is it possible for the purpose of only repainting FS aircrafts, to get a version of either of those programs to a decent price and which version might that be?I assume after a search in this forum that it is OK to use the FSX repaint kit for FS9 repainting.Carl

I assume you mean because you need to use a layered paint kit PSD (Photoshop file) for repainting? If that's the case you can sometimes find older versions of PS for not much money on ebay (but remember, really old versions of PS do not support layers and don't work well on XP, nor Vista), or you could use the free 30-day trial of the current version of PS (CS4) from Adobe (www.adobe.com).But a more practical solution would be to use Paint.net, which is a free photo editing program not dissimilar to Photoshop. It has native support for DDS files and alpha channels too, which means it can create mip mapped textures as well as being useful for older DXT types, and of course transparency via alpha channels. I can't recommend this programme highly enough, and that's coming from someone who works for Adobe! You can find paint.net here: www.getpaint.netPaint.net is regularly updated with features too, and is about as good a substitute for Photoshop as you will find - especially for free.If you really must have Photoshop though, there are some ways to get it cheap: First, you can claim a 'student discount' when buying it if you are a student (and that is any kind of student, even doing night school classes on flower arranging or auto mechanics would qualify providing you can prove it), which I think is about ten percent, so not that great, but better than nothing. However, if you know someone who works as a teacher or lecturer, you could have them buy it for you through their college or school and they would get a considerably larger discount because of working in eduction, less than half price it used to be, but I'm not sure what the educational discount is these days, but I do know it is considerable. So if you are friendly with a teacher, now is the time to call in a favour LOLI'm fairly sure you can easily still buy CS3 Photoshop too, which although not the very latest version, has most things the CS4 version has apart from some 3D rotation tools and a bit more support for web stuff, so nothing that is of any use to you for redoing textures, because the 3D stuff on CS4's toolbar is mostly available in CS3 via the menus.Al

I think Al has just about summed it up !!Paintshop pro is not cheap http://store.corel.com/webapp/wcs/stores/s...&langId=-11Photoshop CS4 will break you heart , and your wallet :( https://store2.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html...=displayProductAnother alternative is the Gimp ( crazy name)http://www.gimp.org/I have never tried it , but looking at the wiki it appears to do all the basic things required to create a paint , including most importantly the ability to use layers Mark

Hi Al and Mark, thank you so much for your responding on my question. I will start digging into the links you have provided.

I assume you mean because you need to use a layered paint kit PSD (Photoshop file) for repainting?

That is what I have in mind, not knowing of other reasons of course. So the information and links provided from both of you is a very good starting point for me.Thanks again !Carl