PMDG Livery Paint Tutorial for FSX & FS9

[Dougal 165]

Many thanks Dan, and for God's sake don't apologise for having a life.Good grief, it's not as if we've had to pay for it!You be the man :(

[Dougal 165]

I've found a way around it, as you can see, by right clicking on the tab I get the option to open in a new window.Also though Dan, note that it's not giving the usual options on the top right (inner) to do as you suggest.This is a new PS CS4 Extended 64bit installation (trial) on Windows7 64bit. I might try installing the 32bit option just to see if it's any different.

[Turbine777 13]

Thanks Phil, for your thanks here as well as your email. I wasn't aware that CS4 had such a change, I did read up on a lot of the changes from CS3 and there really wasn't that many, but this one could pose a problem and again, glad you brought it up.Not being in "Standard Screen Mode" could cause lots of confusion to what you've already ran into as well as other steps further in the tutorial so my main goal is to first get you to the correct mode.Try this, go to "View > Screen Mode > Standard Screen Mode" as shown here:You should also be able to switch screen modes by clicking in your tool bar on the left.Hope this helps,

[Dougal 165]

Seems no matter what I do, the old options just don't seem to be there....

[Turbine777 13]

Seems no matter what I do, the old options just don't seem to be there....

Ok, I finally figured it out. It looks like CS4 has added more dockable areas and place images in tabs by default (Personally, I don't like this). The way to get it to work if you want to keep this style is like so:In your above screen shots you only have one image open at one time. So your "Tabbed windowed interface" looks like this. If you had multiple files (images or .psd's) open it would look like this. To get the desired result, you wold need to add a step to the drag and drop method as explained in the Tutorial.

1. Drag you selection, or layer up to the tab that you want it to go to and wait a second or two.
2. It will switch to the picture or psd that you want.
3. Hold shift (If needing to align them as described in the tutorial) and bring your mouse into the image area and release the mouse button.

That is one way. The other way to make it look like the tutorial would be to undock your images. Like anything else dockable in Photoshop, you would click the docked area and hold while dragging it from it's current spot and then drag it to an open area and release the mouse button. It would look something like this. That will need be done to each image you have open. There must be an easier way but from all of my investigating so far looks like that is it, at least for now. There may be something in preferences, or in the window menu that has options for shutting that off.Again, thanks for pointing these differences out since it will help others. You are currently a pioneer for doing this in CS4 and I'll make any needed corrections in the final pdf before submitting to PMDG.

[Dougal 165]

Hi DanHope the move is/was not too traumatic. I've done farrrrrr too many of those in recent decades;-) I know only too well how things can so easily go pearshaped.Sadly, PS7 won't install to my main PC (Win7 x64), so I now have PS7 installed on my networked XP PC, and CS4 Extended (whatever that means) on this one. There are indeed many differences, all be it loads just seem different ways of implementing the same or similar feature. What's real blow, at least to me is the loss of the 'Undo' & 'Redo' buttons. It seems even Ctrl+Alt+Z doesn't work, though still tinkering with that.Having just printed off ALL 700 pages of the CS4 manual, it could well be some time before I return to either FSX or the tutorial :( :( :( B) Got some light bedtime reading now eh? B) EDIT: Another for you... Pressing 'W' in CS4 doesn't produce the 'Magic Wand', it gives the 'Quick Selection'. Clicking on the tool icon gives the choice of either.TTFN

[frimm 0]

Great tutorial Dan, and for anyone having problems with CS4, go to the "Window" menu item, and select "Arrange" then "Float all in windows". This will put any open images in separate windows. You'll probably have to do this everytime you need it cos at least on my system, closing and restarting PS resets to the default setting.Mike

[Dougal 165]

Great tutorial Dan, and for anyone having problems with CS4, go to the "Window" menu item, and select "Arrange" then "Float all in windows". This will put any open images in separate windows. You'll probably have to do this everytime you need it cos at least on my system, closing and restarting PS resets to the default setting.Mike

Mike, it's possibe to change the default settings for this in Preferences/Interface/Panels & Documents

[Turbine777 13]

Hi David, I'm glad this tutorial got you painting, I know that level of accomplishment you were talking about, and it's a great feeling.The white band your seeing is most likely because of the "747400_Fuse_Cut_Template" your using. Use the one from the PMDG747-400F_PaintKit and it should fix the problem. Look like the sizes are wrong on the other one.Hope this helps, and enjoy your paints.

[Dougal 165]

Hi David, I'm glad this tutorial got you painting, I know that level of accomplishment you were talking about, and it's a great feeling.The white band your seeing is most likely because of the "747400_Fuse_Cut_Template" your using. Use the one from the PMDG747-400F_PaintKit and it should fix the problem. Look like the sizes are wrong on the other one.Hope this helps, and enjoy your paints.

Hi DanHow was the move? Not too traumatic I hope?

[Turbine777 13]

Hi DanHow was the move? Not too traumatic I hope?

Haha, thanks for asking Phil, The move itself was fine in comparison to new things I'm dealing with at the new place. Luckily I'm a plumber because I've had to fix a few freeze ups in the heating systems baseboard and decided to make my room it's own zone. Bathroom is partially gutted but coming along ok and still need to replace some areas of wall and ceilings from all of the new heat rerouting. So a little plumbing and electrical left to d but decided to take the weekend off. The hardest part of the move was moving my TV and getting rid of my piano. I took my piano 80% apart with a 4-in-1 screwdriver, enough anyway to get outside then sledge hammered the harp and used a chainsaw on the thicker base. It was sad to do, but my love for demo work made it bearable. Another reason for the break is to redo my comp yet again,,, I just insalled Win7 64 Ult, so am doing the fun fun process of reinstalling all of my programs and games. I have the Photoshop Production package so still need to reinstall it and many Dvd's before I can answer some questions. One thing I forgot to mention earlier was in your comment on changing tools. The letters should be the same for all of the tools from what I read, but if a tool has different variations of that tool (such as the wand tool and Quick Selection tool both being tied to "W"), you would hit "W" for it, then use "Shift+W" to cycle between the other sub tools. Once you make your selection once, just hitting W will then bring it back to the last tool you used for it's category. I cross referenced the tut with a couple version of PS but only read about and watched videos of CS4 differences and missed a couple that weren't mentioned. I've added them to the future pdf version and will coninue to do so thanks to your feedback. Weird that I did a fresh install of PS before writing the tutorial so I made sure I would see it as a new user, but must have not deleted the PS folder in my local settings folder that seems to have saved my preferences.How's your progress coming on your paint? I should have PS loaded back on my comp later or tomorrow at the latest.Hope all is well,

[Barthandelus 1]

Outstanging! Iv done a couple now!Any news of the pdf document? If its ok, id like to print it out and put in in my PMDG documentation folder, as well as be able to follow your guide from paper.Thanks again for your efforts!!!!

[Turbine777 13]

Outstanging! Iv done a couple now!Any news of the pdf document? If its ok, id like to print it out and put in in my PMDG documentation folder, as well as be able to follow your guide from paper.Thanks again for your efforts!!!!

Sheesh, sorry for the late reply Adrian, I thought I had, but think I may be typing things out at times and not clicking submit haha (my brain cell is on vacation I thinks :( ).The PDF will be a while yet since I want more feedback and am also going to be building another rig soon for a friend which also wants me to install CS4. I want to be able to note any changes for those that need them who may be using the demo from Adobe. It will be a while yet, but of course you can do as you wish with it. Same as this. I only ask people to link back to this rather than copying it and pasting it in another location is all.Out of the paints you've done so far have any been an Iron Maiden? I'd love to see them, even if not :) I may actually do an MD-11 Iron Maiden, but a fictional and might do that in the next day or so. I just need to add some of their tunes to my FSX soundtrack (easy to do with Adobe Soundbooth, you just need to convert to the correct wav format & sample rate) hehe.

That was the problem, and I'm looking at the new texture I made on the plane now--incredible. I cannot believe I made that! Many thanks!

That's awesome David!I love the "I cannot believe I made that!" feeling and glad you feel that as well. That was one of the hopes of doing this tutorial for people, that they see how easy they can do what they might think they cannot. It's a great feeling and one that keeps painters so involved in their work :)

[Turbine777 13]

Hi David, I don't the problem is in the Alpha channel, but more just the time of day. The best you can do is adjust your base colors in your externals.psd and get it as close as you can. Sometimes it requires multiple samples to get it right and like I say in the tut, the way the lighting works in FS can make things look darker or lighter (by a lot) depending on time of day and orientation of the Aircraft.I don't see anything wrong in the picture you have here since it isn't showing much of the wings but I can see the lighter color of the slats underneath the wing. The main thing I see here is the leading edge but that of course is suppose to be a metalic color so I don't think that's what your trying to show.Sorry but I'm not sure yet what the problem is from the pic and only the description (which I think is enough). The 747-400 is by far the tougher of the paints, especially for the lighter colors to match up. The belly color is normally the toughest since there are other factors and layers at work that are the masks and shadows. The -8, MD-11 and JS41 are much easier with eliminating the seperate belly color. The wings and stab though are normally just a matter of resampling and FS lighting changes. When you do your first paints it is good to also load up and run other paints so you can see what maybe FS and what you can control. A lot of things are not noticed until you're scrutinizing over your own perfection. If you still have problems I'll gladly test it out and let you know if I see anything. Otherwise it looks great! Very nice job here David!

[Turbine777 13]

Apologies to anyone experiencing issues with links and pictures. My website is running very slow this weekend and may even go down for a day or two while I change host's (bandwidth with this one has been dropping far too much for my liking). It should be resolved soon and no changes need to be made, but wanted to give a late heads up :(If anyone has questions if pictures stop working for the day, just let me know and I'll explain in more detail the needed step or provide a temporary alternate link to the needed pic.