Who is using Photoshop CC 2015?

[specialist 51]

For many years I've painted tons of liveries with my old and faithful Corel Paint Shop Pro program. However, as paint kits have gotten larger and more complex, I've had to move on and migrate to Adobe Photoshop CC despite my reservations about joining the Adobe Creative Cloud family. I was going to try and buy the 64bit version of Corel Paint Shop Pro X7, but it wasn't working as smooth as I hoped. Although many tools are similar, there are many others I'm not familiar with in Photoshop. I've checked YouTube channels to see how others are painting FSX liveries with the latest Photoshop CC program, but I didn't come across any. The best videos out there is for those still using the earlier versions of Photoshop CS. I've also noticed that many folks advise that they should download and install DDS Utilities, DDS viewer, and NVIDIA DDS Plug-in.

Checking around for an answer, I came across several other forums where some are saying that these plugins no longer work with the latest versions of Photoshop. Is it because Photoshop CC (2015), which is the version I got no longer requires them, or are there other plug-in I should be using instead?

For those of you who do use the latest Photoshop CC 2015 version, can you please advise what has been your experience? I really want to get started on my paint projects again, but as part of my learning curve with Photoshop, I want to make sure I'm starting on the right foot.

[EagleSkinner 36]

Hi Johnny,

 

You'd have been better off getting the Corel Draw Suite - if you look around, you can usually find a copy of a version two generations old for a really good price and it has more than enough functions than you can shake a stick at. (Try Amazon for instance) As far as plugins goes - who needs them? Making the normal maps? You can do them in Draw. By the way, Corel Draw Suite has Corel Photopaint and Corel Draw included - as well as some other useful little programs - so it can do vector graphics (as in Adobe Illustrator) and photo work on raster graphics (as in Photoshop)

 

You can of course get 'The Gimp' for free. This is a photoshop clone. A bit klutzy to get used to I suppose, but then I have been using the Corel software for over 22 years now, so I am set in my ways.

 

Oh, Corel Draw Suite latest version is X7 so look around for anything X3 or higher - X3 will do EVERYTHING you need for texturing aircraft. It'll even do your bump maps once you figure out the Corel way to do it.

[specialist 51]

Gotta be honest, I never consider Corel Draw for painting liveries. Let me check and see how that works, since I'm still under the 30 days CC membership.

[John_Tavendale 453]

You don't need to use the plugin really.

 

I use imagetool to convert my psd into dds format. The only difference it makes it a 32bit image not a DXT5 image. But I prefer it that way.

[EagleSkinner 36]

DXTbmp is also ideal for converting to DDS. If you want 4096 textures, then you have to save as TGA for loading into DXTbmp - otherwise DXTbmp resizes to 2048. A plus there for imagetool.

Corel Photopaint is the equivalent to Photoshop - you can open psd files no problems. You can even export as psd. One Photoshop advantage is you can export to DDS with alpha - in Photopaint you can't and need two images - the colour texture and the alpha texture. But that, in my opinion, is an advantage for Corel, because you can tune the alpha bitmaps a lot better that way.

 

You can even set options in Corel to make it "look" like Photoshop so that crossgraders can still see the functions the way they're used to. But at our level of needs (aircraft repainters) both Corel and Adobe offer hundreds (thousands?) more functions than most of us will really need.

In the final analysis, it's a matter of personal choice, price and feel.

[Steve Dra 7,557]

Hey Johnny,

I've been using Paintshop Pro since version 3 to paint planes (i.e since for forever hehe), and currently using X6 64 with the PMDG paintkits (as big and complex as they come), without any issues.

 

I'm using version X6, so I don't know if your issues are specific to the X7 version you have, but if you can briefly describe your issues, I may be able to help.

 

I too want to learn CS just for the sake of learning the industry default program, but can't get past the additional cost.  :wink:

 

Here is a PMDG 777F I'm currently working on in X6/64:

 

 

@ John T - Fantastic set of paints coming out of your shop recently mate, so good to have your talented brush back in the community!  

Actually saw a WestJet 737 crossing over the freeway ramp at KDFW last Sunday as I was driving a friend to a departing flight.  Would have not initially recognized it (saw the tail before the fuse), had it not been for your recent release of her that I caught here in the forums. :smile:  

I'd love to fly her, but I only have the -800/900 of the 737   :(

[John_Tavendale 453]

Hey Johnny,

I've been using Paintshop Pro since version 3 to paint planes (i.e since for forever hehe), and currently using X6 64 with the PMDG paintkits (as big and complex as they come), without any issues.

 

I'm using version X6, so I don't know if your issues are specific to the X7 version you have, but if you can briefly describe your issues, I may be able to help.

 

I too want to learn CS just for the sake of learning the industry default program, but can't get past the additional cost.  :wink:

 

Here is a PMDG 777F I'm currently working on in X6/64:

 

 

 

@ John T - Fantastic set of paints coming out of your shop recently mate, so good to have your talented brush back in the community!  

Actually saw a WestJet 737 crossing over the freeway ramp at KDFW last Sunday as I was driving a friend to a departing flight.  Would have not initially recognized it (saw the tail before the fuse), had it not been for your recent release of her that I caught here in the forums. :smile:  

I'd love to fly her, but I only have the -800/900 of the 737   :(

Good ol paintshop pro! I was using v5 till last year, but had to make the move obviously to paint the PMDG planes.

 

It's good to be back and painting. Don't worry, a WestJet -800 is coming soon

[specialist 51]

I too prefer 32bit over DXT5, John. 

 

Steve, as for the problem I was having with X7 was, that the 64bit program was not opening my PMDG and Flight1 B200 paint kit as easy as Photoshop does. It stutters and lags when I try to move around the canvas with X7, and sometimes it would even crash the program for some reason. I'm not having that issue so far with Photoshop.

 

I'm beginning to understand my way around Photoshop, but I just hate not owning the software right out of the box. I guess the advantage of Creative Cloud is that a year membership comes out to just $129.00, and any time there is a new update, you get that upgrade automatically. Still, not to comfortable with not owning a software for keeps.

[Steve Dra 7,557]

I too prefer 32bit over DXT5, John. 

 

Steve, as for the problem I was having with X7 was, that the 64bit program was not opening my PMDG and Flight1 B200 paint kit as easy as Photoshop does. It stutters and lags when I try to move around the canvas with X7, and sometimes it would even crash the program for some reason. I'm not having that issue so far with Photoshop.

 

I'm beginning to understand my way around Photoshop, but I just hate not owning the software right out of the box. I guess the advantage of Creative Cloud is that a year membership comes out to just $129.00, and any time there is a new update, you get that upgrade automatically. Still, not to comfortable with not owning a software for keeps.

Hey Johnny, I vaguely remember the PMDG kit having a layer that was huge...maybe a vector layer with a ton of lines that may have given me similar issues (its been a while).  Anyway, removing that layer, and saving the kit at a PSP native file worked great for me.

Either way, I'd suggest you continue to get your PSD skills up...it never hurts to have that program on your resume.  Can't think of a better way than to paint planes...and if it's ever a required skill for an interview or on the job, well...there you go.  :wink:

If you ever want to make friends for life with the fairer gender at work, just show them how you can "retouch" photos...take away lines, wrinkles, blemishes, etc off their portrait and they will be amazed, LOL.

For us in the know (us graphic artists say its so simple), it just a few strokes with the push, smudge and soften brushes and you can erase decades off the photo!

I duplicate the original as a base layer, then do all the touchups on the layer above.  Then you grab the opacity slider on the top layer when you're done to show them the before and after....its pretty cool to watch their reaction. :smile:

Of course I also do all the screenshot editing for our tech and educational manuals at work...alot of times the screen needs a value or lab result you can't get in the test system, so I borrow it off a shot of the live system and blend it in to the screenshot, again child's play vs painting a dirt layer or rivet layer on a plane!  Always a sought-after skill once folks who don't know all the tricks of a graphics program see what you can do. :Whistle:

 

Good ol paintshop pro! I was using v5 till last year, but had to make the move obviously to paint the PMDG planes.

 

It's good to be back and painting. Don't worry, a WestJet -800 is coming soon

Hey John, can't wait for the -800.  Still need to get down-under and take your Qantas paints around your part of the world. :wink:

[John_Tavendale 453]

I got around to installing CC 2015 and you can install the nVidia tools into it. They work fine.