Hello,

    I am new to trying to repaint FS aircraft so please bear with me.  I recently purchased Aerosoft's DHC-2 Beaver.  While I have had a great time flying the plane, I would like to try to make my own paint for it.  I downloaded the paint kit from the Aerosoft site.  When I opened it with Paint.net, I found a red and gray aircraft.  My question is how do I remove or paint over these colors so I can start with an all white plane?  I can cetainly paint over everything with white, but I lose all of the panel line, rivet, etc detail.  How do I keep this detail while removing or painting the aircraft white?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

For painting aircraft, you absolutely NEED a program that can handle multiple layers.  I broke down finally and bought PaintShop Pro, and haven't looked back since.  Some folks swear by PhotoShop, but I could never transition between the two interfaces, so I'm stuck using PSP.

If the paint kit doesn't include layers, you're pretty much out of luck.  You'll have to isolate the rivets and panel lines, then promote them to an upper layer.  A strenuous and tedious process, but worth it if you want to get a good repaint.

garryrussell wrote on May 14^th, 2009 at 4:18am:


Yeah, that will work, too.  Although I have run into issues in the past where having a multiply layer compromises some of the colors I'm using.  For instance: if a part is dark blue and you want it to be bright yellow, but retain the detail, you're kinda screwed.

If the paintkit was layered the layers will be already be seperated when you open it.


Garry

Well, after downloading both Paint.net and the paint kit you mentioned, I'm a bit stumped.  How did you open the files in the first place?  Paint.net is incapable of opening that type of file.  Or at least it is without some kind of upgrade or plugin.

At any rate, this seems to be your issue.  If you're going to paint aircraft, the only answer is to get a good repaint program.  PSP or PhotoShop are fairly expensive (PSP ~ $100 US, PhotoShop ~ $700 US), but there are other options out there.  One of which is a dedicated program designed for FS.  It reads the FS model as well as the textures and renders a 3D image of the texture on the model itself, so you can see exactly what the changes you are making can do for the model.  It is called FS Repaint and is only $30 US.  Cheaper by far, and powerful enough for what you want to do.

I did open the files with PSP, and they are layered.  Your problem lies in the fact that Paint.net cannot open any file type that preserves layers.  You're pretty much out of luck unless you purchase a program that can handle something like that.

Hagar wrote on May 15^th, 2009 at 5:03pm:


Ah, yes!  I completely forgot about those!  Sorry . . .