I mainly use PSP8 or PSP9 to increase and decrease the bitmap color schemes, change brightness or change overall color tints. On rarer occasions, I've used the 'effects' options for enhancements on complex pxs (better than my old pixel-by-pixel method but I usually still do some pixel touchup).
An 'AF to BMP' search just gave me this page for
texture conversion. You may wish to know that the
mdl file does not care about the name of a file, as long as it matches what is given in it; it
is sensitive to the px complexity -- don't give it more than a 256-color format for CFS1 (this is why some CFS2 homebuilds will actually work in CFS1 when textures are converted to 256-color).
During Free Flight / Quick Combat aircraft selection, any aircraft sharing the same texture names in like
mdls will show up with those of that first selected. This can be changed by changing the texture names in both the texture folder and matching them (must be character per character) in the
mdl. If you're not adept at this, the acft won't work, however; just changing the names in the texture folder will result in no texture application, although you will view your 'bare'craft.