[Colonol Dekker]

I've recently decided to start modelling again. Everyones using DDS files now for obvious reasons, i've got paintshop pro 7 and an ATI 9000 series card (dunno what exact card ) would the Nvidia plugin work on it? What should i use to view them as i've never worked with the format. Cheer dudes.

[Angelus]

If not, there is a ATI tool which does the same on the ATI homepage somewhere. It's called the Compressonator.

[Colonol Dekker]

Ta muchly. I'm guessing i just dump it in the "paintshop pro / plugin" folder. Ok i'm off to google that ati doodad.

[Angelus]

The Compressonator is not a plugin ( i didn't search the ATI site for plug ins, maybe you're lucky and find one ), it's a standalone tool.

Load the files in it, click on compress, choose which of the DDS options fits your needs and save the file "as compressed", done.

[Colonol Dekker]

Bah my phone refuses to download from either the ATI site or the NVidia site. I'll take my bluetooth dongle to work tomorrow and whack em both on phone. Any other 3rd party recommendations? Preferably compatible with psp7? Thanks for the help so far by the way.

[Zacam]

The nVidia Texture tool plugins are independant of hardware, they will work on a system that has an ATI/AMD card.

One of my other machines is running a Radeon 9600 XT, works jusst fine on it under Photoshop 7.

[Jeff Vader]

Umm, if you're able to install software, try Paint.NET. DDS support comes by default.

[Wanderer]

Just remember. Do not use DDS files for any WIP graphics. Stick with TGA or with some more or less lossless format until the final conversion. The quality of converters varies and it will have an impact on the effect. With certain effects it is best to use as uncompressed u888 or u8888 (or just leaving the image as TGA) formats instead of converting it to DXT1c or DXT5 (respectively) DDS formats. From what i have read the best quality stuff should come with nvdxt command line tool using -quality_highest option. But that info may or may not be outdated by now.

[Colonol Dekker]

Any info's welcome info. Cheers, i'll get tif NVidia tools and compressor today and have a dabble in both. Cheers i think this is my quandry resolved. Thanks

[chief1983]

Gimp also is free and has a DDS plugin available, besides Paint.NET which is also free.  I don't know of any plugin for Paint Shop Pro.  I haven't used it heavily for some time.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm a psp vet since pcg used to give trials away on it's cover cds. I'll check those other programs out also. Thanks

[Zacam]

I got tired of having to _try_ to work with alpha channels ('scuse me, MASK's) in PSP, that I just went with Photoshop.

GiMP is fine, and (IMO) either is better than Paint.NET. (Not bashing the programing done on it, hell of a nice job they did and it is possibly the only application that I can point at and say "They made something in .Net that WORK's without trying to Borg a system", but it's still not my cup of tea.)

[chief1983]

I just like some of the approaches they took in Paint.NET.  Not just cloning other stuff but coming up with new (at least to me) ways of doing a few things.  The quality of the exporters is also pretty good I've thought.  But yeah, Gimp is definitely more useful if you can use it, and need that level of functionality.  I just fire up Paint.NET for screencaps and quick resizes and stuff.  Masks were difficult in PSP, you're right.  I've had a much easier time with that kind of editing in Gimp than I ever did in PSP or Paint.NET.