PMDG livery designing on a Mac

[vedus 1]

Hi everyone,

 

I haven't been on the forum for a long time, but I decided to step out and start a new topic, as I decided to try myself at livery design.

For now I love working pictures on a MacBookPro running on OSX El Capitan. And I was wondering if FSX and PMDG livery designing would be possible on a Mac. 

PhotoShop exists and is available for Mac for instance, and as I work a lot on Mac, that would be great if I could design liveries on this laptop.

 

Any suggestion, ideas, or advice would be really much, much appreciated.

 

On another side I'm getting bored of seeing always the same liveries made over and over again for the same airlines/aircraft (The Lufthansa 747-8i is just too much to me!) and I'd love to see more FS fun, with original liveries, and creations of my own that I could set available for download on Avsim....

 

 

Waiting for your replies!

 

Thanks and Merry Christmas to you all!

 

David

[Sandy_Bridge 11]

Hi everyone,

 

I haven't been on the forum for a long time, but I decided to step out and start a new topic, as I decided to try myself at livery design.

For now I love working pictures on a MacBookPro running on OSX El Capitan. And I was wondering if FSX and PMDG livery designing would be possible on a Mac. 

PhotoShop exists and is available for Mac for instance, and as I work a lot on Mac, that would be great if I could design liveries on this laptop.

 

Any suggestion, ideas, or advice would be really much, much appreciated.

 

On another side I'm getting bored of seeing always the same liveries made over and over again for the same airlines/aircraft (The Lufthansa 747-8i is just too much to me!) and I'd love to see more FS fun, with original liveries, and creations of my own that I could set available for download on Avsim....

 

 

Waiting for your replies!

 

Thanks and Merry Christmas to you all!

 

David

Of course you can. The question is if you can pack it into a .ptp package. I don't know how PMDG designed that format, 7-zip cannot open it. I believe there are some instructions in the Paint Kit readme.

[Kenzo 24]

Of course you can. The question is if you can pack it into a .ptp package. I don't know how PMDG designed that format, 7-zip cannot open it. I believe there are some instructions in the Paint Kit readme.

I don't know if DXTbmp will run on Mac. Creating a .ptp file can be done by installing the paint manual and then exporting it to .ptp through the operations center.

[Sandy_Bridge 11]

I don't know if DXTbmp will run on Mac. Creating a .ptp file can be done by installing the paint manual and then exporting it to .ptp through the operations center.

DXTbmp? Never heard of it. What does it do?

 

Sorry for the late reply, I'm not AVSIM often.

[kevinh 409]

DXTbmp? Never heard of it. What does it do?

 

Sorry for the late reply, I'm not AVSIM often.

DXTbmp converts different graphic formats DXT to bmp, bmp to DXT, conversion to dds. It covers all the variations of each type. Now that photoshop has a plugin which handles dds files you don't need DXTbmp, but it can still be a useful texture viewer.

[Nuno Pinto 1,397]

The nVidia texture tools for Photoshop are way more advanced than DXTBmp and have no issues with large textures (4096x4096) like DTXBmp does. You need to have an nVidia card obviously.

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

 

 

 

The NVIDIA DDS plug-in supports the DXTC texture compression format and allows you to open and save .dds files in RGB format. It reads and writes .dds files in compressed or uncompressed forms, provides support for per-MIP color fading, MIP-corrected normal mapping, and more.

[joolsd 10]

Hi everyone,

 

I haven't been on the forum for a long time, but I decided to step out and start a new topic, as I decided to try myself at livery design.

For now I love working pictures on a MacBookPro running on OSX El Capitan. And I was wondering if FSX and PMDG livery designing would be possible on a Mac. 

PhotoShop exists and is available for Mac for instance, and as I work a lot on Mac, that would be great if I could design liveries on this laptop.

 

Any suggestion, ideas, or advice would be really much, much appreciated.

 

On another side I'm getting bored of seeing always the same liveries made over and over again for the same airlines/aircraft (The Lufthansa 747-8i is just too much to me!) and I'd love to see more FS fun, with original liveries, and creations of my own that I could set available for download on Avsim....

 

 

Waiting for your replies!

 

Thanks and Merry Christmas to you all!

 

David

 

Well Photoshop on a mac won't be a problem.  It is just textures.

 

I thought macs had bootcamp on them (If you had windows you could put it on there) so DXTtexture programs would ork on that?

[vedus 1]

Of course you can. The question is if you can pack it into a .ptp package. I don't know how PMDG designed that format, 7-zip cannot open it. I believe there are some instructions in the Paint Kit readme.

 

 

Thanks! I didn't know that PMDG Paint Kits had instructions regarding the textures files format. I'll check that out.

 

 

I don't know if DXTbmp will run on Mac. Creating a .ptp file can be done by installing the paint manual and then exporting it to .ptp through the operations center.

 

 

Thanks for that info! I'm discovering the whole livery design process curently so any info is helpful, even if it sounds "basic" to you ;-)

 

 

DXTbmp converts different graphic formats DXT to bmp, bmp to DXT, conversion to dds. It covers all the variations of each type. Now that photoshop has a plugin which handles dds files you don't need DXTbmp, but it can still be a useful texture viewer.

 

 

Ok, so DXTbmp can be "avoided" now with the Photoshop plugin? That's great! thanks!

 

 

The nVidia texture tools for Photoshop are way more advanced than DXTBmp and have no issues with large textures (4096x4096) like DTXBmp does. You need to have an nVidia card obviously.

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

 

 

That's what I got on my MacBookPro. Sounds good! Thanks!  So Photoshop is the most "obvious" software for livery design? 

 

Well Photoshop on a mac won't be a problem.  It is just textures.

 

I thought macs had bootcamp on them (If you had windows you could put it on there) so DXTtexture programs would ork on that?

 

Bootcamp is somewhat my "second choice", I'm not fond of letting Microsoft enter my Mac Laptop.... Maybe a bit supersticious :-)

 

 

Thank you very much for your help folks. So regarding your last post, Photoshop seems to be THE tool for livery design. Is there any other tool that would be Mac compatible for livery design? Any idea of the price for these softwares? Photoshop looks very expensive, I don't know if I can afford it right now.... 

 

Thanks! Happy New Year to you all!

 

David

[Kenzo 24]

Thank you very much for your help folks. So regarding your last post, Photoshop seems to be THE tool for livery design. Is there any other tool that would be Mac compatible for livery design? Any idea of the price for these softwares? Photoshop looks very expensive, I don't know if I can afford it right now.... 

 

Thanks! Happy New Year to you all!

 

David

Basically you should be able to use any software, as long as it can open and edit .psd files.

 

I remember reading somewhere that Adobe released Photoshop CS2 as freeware, had something to do with not being able to maintain the activation servers if I remember correctly. It might not be the latest version, but it will do just fine. Don't know if it runs on the latest versions of OSX. Let's see if I can find some info on it.

 

Edit: http://www.redmondpie.com/download-adobe-photoshop-cs2-for-free-legally-while-you-still-can/

Edited January 3, 2016 by Kenzo

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

I haven't been on the forum for a long time

 

Quick reminder of the rule that full names - first and last - are required in the forum here.

[vedus 1]

Basically you should be able to use any software, as long as it can open and edit .psd files.

 

I remember reading somewhere that Adobe released Photoshop CS2 as freeware, had something to do with not being able to maintain the activation servers if I remember correctly. It might not be the latest version, but it will do just fine. Don't know if it runs on the latest versions of OSX. Let's see if I can find some info on it.

 

Edit: http://www.redmondpie.com/download-adobe-photoshop-cs2-for-free-legally-while-you-still-can/

 

I'll check that out right away. Thanks for the info. I'd like to design livery but unfortunately the price of PSP is a little too much to me. I'm making my research for another, cheaper tool, that'll do the job correctly. The thing is, practicing for a while on some basic tools to get the basics of livery design is my short term goal, but in the end if my liveries get the required quality, I'd like to have them downloadable on avsim.... Let's see if it works.

 

Sorry for my late replies, as part of my real life is flying a real airliner with real passenger on my back ;-) and I just finished my full rating on the B737NG (800) and I'm enjoying it A LOT!!

 

 

Quick reminder of the rule that full names - first and last - are required in the forum here.

 

 

Thanks for the reminder! I stand corrected ;-)