Ryan Landis wrote:I would like to toy with repaints myself. Any good tutorials/editing software I could educate myself with? Using FSX.
Ryan, how good are you with a fully-featured paint program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro?
Understanding how to work with layers is key to repainting aircraft, but the basic paint programs like Windows Paint don't do layers (that I am aware of).
Secondly, you need to get the free program,
DXTDMP, that will first open the aircraft textures and preserve the alpha channel (this is done automatically, nothing special needed), and then send the texture image over to your paint program for editing. Once you make the changes in the paint program, you save that file and reload the changes back into DXTBMP. You then use DXTBMP to save the texture back to the aircraft directory and test your changes.
If you are proficient with a layer-based paint program like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or even the freeware,
GIMP, let me know and I could put together a basic tutorial to at least get you started.
EDIT: Here's a good YouTube tutorial :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPdyN35q ... re=related
In the end, repainting takes a lot of patience and some trial and error.
This version is for the masses, but I get to fly the one with the real world tail number. 
