Livery painting tool

[ESA_Dodo 1]

I am very bad at that (along with so many other things) nor I have Photoshop. I'm flying around the world with an Alabeo Cessna 404 Titan, changing from time to time between default liveries including the white one. I feel like a pirate.

Is there any program in the market to help a mostly good for nothing man to put at least the reg tag onto the tail of the plane.

Thanks a lot.

[spearmint_flyer 579]

Look for GIMP its like a free photoshop.

[ESA_Dodo 1]

Thanks. I will follow your advise.

[AnkH 2,260]

If you are happy with not so professional repaints, you should also use "DXTbmp", another freeware tool. With this, you can quickly convert .dds textures to a .bmp file, export it, modify it and convert it back to .dds, including the same alpha-file. The .bmp you could even modify with paint, this works but of course you will not end up with a super-duper-hd repaint.

[GACSavannah 227]

You might want to look at FSRepaint. I have no personal experience with it, but at only $20 USD it might be worth trying.

http://www.fsrepaint.com.br/fsrepainting/index.htm

[avgaskoolaid 292]

I use paint.net (paintdotnet). It's a free tool (not a website as the name might lead you to believe!) and has a lot of plugins, etc. I've used it to create several liveries in the past, including my Northwest Airlink paint for the Carenado Do228 here in the file library and a few for XPlane. I used this tutorial to learn the very, very basics way back in 2009, and it still holds up today. 

And here is a link to the software:

https://www.getpaint.net/

Personally, I like it better than gimp, but that could be because I'm used to it. I've used photoshop in the past and to me paint.net feels very close. A lot more simple, but close. 

Bear in mind though that Alabeo/Carenado aircraft are ***horrible*** to repaint. They have all sorts of weird curves on the fuselage that make painting a straight line extremely difficult. You might want to start out by practicing on an aircraft with a proper paint kit. 

[ESA_Dodo 1]

Thanks a lot to you all. I'm putting some time with video tutorials in order to see if I can overcome my fears 

I will explore all your recommendations but I'm sure it will take me some time to make any progress.

Already downloaded DXTbmp. If it is simple, Paint.net will have many options to be the winner.

In one or maybe two years, repaints for free for you all 

[ESA_Dodo 1]

Thanks to your help this is what I have been abble to do. Still far from a good job but better than nothing.

Thanks again to you all.

Just a question if anyone can tell me. DXTbmp is a 16/32 bitmap texture manipulator. I guess it will not work with the 64bit updated versions; is that correct?

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

47 minutes ago, ESA_Dodo said:

I guess it will not work with the 64bit updated versions; is that correct?

No. Not as far as I'm concerned anyway. Works fine.

[ESA_Dodo 1]

Thanks Ron!