I've been thinking of becoming an aircraft painter, but I'm not exactly sure how to start out.I have Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 and Adobe PhotoShop 5.0 LE. I could use either or both to start repaints. I do have experience in dealing with graphics, but never anything such as painting planes in FS. I don't know how to deal with advanced things such as alpha channeling for example.I have done some minor edits and corrections to paints for personal use, but not much more then that.I'd like to start out nice and simple and paint MEA.The main difficulty I am having is finding a logo the beautiful Cedar tree as pictured below:http://users.adelphia.net/~nabilb727/MEA3304.jpgI could use the Cedar from that above photo, but I don't think it has enough detail (or is big enough) to look good in an FS repaint on the A330 or A321 (when IFDG releases it). There is also that perspective issue. The photograph wasn't taken exactly perpendicular to the tail.Arabic is an issue also. I could type it up, but the Arabic font on my computer is not the same as the one MEA uses it.That's basically the problem I'm having, with resources. Does anyone have any tips or any sort of ideas?Any feedback from fellow painters would be greatly appreciated! I'd like to join the club!Regards

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com contains all of the resizeable images you could possibly need for the majority of airlines.PSP7 is fine for repainting aircraft, it's used by some of the top painters out there.

Thanks for your reply Xtra.That website has a good EPS file for the text on MEA, but the Cedar tree logo is very very very lacking.It looks like I may very well need to get the Cedar tree off of a photo...I just don't know how I'll do it....Regards

MEA707,Painting is VERY VERY VERY addictive, TRUST ME :-lolHaving said that, it's not as hard as people imagine it. It does require alot of trial and error and trying things out till you get it the way YOU like. Sourcing out a paint is what takes me the longest. Finding good reference material comes from many different sources. Airliners.net, the airlines website, magazines, my local library has been a great source of PhotoShop related material and asking questions in forums. Like Xtra pointed out, Brands of the World is great for getting high quality logo's to use but sometimes, like your Cedar tree, you have to improvise. Go to Airliners.net and do a search for ALL MEA aircraft. Go through the list and when you find a good, high quality side shot of the tail, e-mail the author asking permission to use it then you can cut the tail and paste it onto the base texture from the paint kit you downloaded. You'll have to make adjustments to the "photo-real" tail so that it fits and resembles the photo. Don't worry if it's off a pixel or two, there are allowable tollerances :-)The thing to remember is, there's no quick guide to "Get You Painting in 10 Easy Steps" Try..try...try and try again. It took me a good few months of playing around in PhotoShop before I felt comfortable enough to make my first "downloadable" project (Westjet B737-800). Since then, I can't stop :-) Everyone's skill level is different and it may take you a couple of days or it may take you a couple of weeks, just don't give up!!If you need help with painting tips, you can always visit the paint kit authors forums (iFDG, POSKY, etc..). There's a wealth of info that can be found in some of those forums. Also, ask your fellow painters! there are several in this forum (Fiveholer, me, Steve Dra etc..). If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an e-mail!Hope this helped!Mikehttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/MCA_Aero_sig.jpgFS Parts Exchange

Mike,Thank you so much for your kind reply! You've given me an idea of how I should start out, looks like I will need to use photos.One concern I have though with using photos is that it is difficult to find a close-up of a tail that shows the logo large enough. In paint kits, typically the tail is quite big. This will mean I will have to resize it.Can this be done with keeping descent quality? I know there are different resizing modes such as bilinear and bicubic.I was told to get a descently sized shot of the Cedar tree, feather it out of the background, and resize it in bilinear or bicubic mode.Again, thanks for your help! I'm going to start having some free time in 2 weeks, so I will have plenty of time to do repaints!Regards

you're lucky with this particular plant. :) trace it, save it as vector and tweak in some illustrator or other to your heart's content. then rasterize to target size and resolution. no loss of quality, quite the opposite, with a bit of patience you'll have a cedar scalable to life size. this won't work with most multi-hue bitmaps, but that cedar should be fine.google keywords: trace bitmap, vector, line drawing, corel trace, adobe streamline. best of luck!vilk

Thanks Vilk!When I trace it, won't I get little jagged edges from the pixels?I'm sure there is a way to anti-alias a trace though, I'll have to check it out.Thanks a lot for your help guys!Regards

interesting thread. You download a livery for an aircraft and sometimes it's easy to forget all the hard work that goes into it. Good luck with your painting!billg

no worry, you can always adjust trace sensitivity. or you can smooth your curves out later. :)