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Changing format in Image Tool causes blotchy colours

spatialpro

spatialpro

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unitedkingdom
I'm doing some repaints in Photoshop v8.0. The colour (color) scheme is white undersides with dark grey (gray) upper surfaces. I've created a reasonable Alpha channel (although I may also ask for advice about this in another thread). I flatten the image and save as a new *.psd.

I then open the *.psd file in FSX Image Tool (ImageTool) and check the Alpha channel is present and correct. Next, I change the Format. I use DXT3... but something happens. The grey upper surfaces change from gently varying shades of grey into blotchy shades of grey with hints of pastel colours (especially pink and light blue). The same thing happens when trying DXT5 format. When saved as DDS and loaded in FSX these blotchy colours still exist. The white undersides (255, 255, 255 RGB) are not effected.

Why is this happening and what can I do to prevent it? To me it seems like Image Tool is trying to reduce the colour depth, thus binning all the shades of grey into fewer colours. Does this sound about right?
 
From my experience, I found it best to make a duplicate of my psd, flatten, then save out as 16bit BMP. (You could even record a new action to make it a one click deal)

Load that into fsx imagetool and try your conversions then. If you're still getting blotchy results then it must be something else. Hope that helps.
 
Hi,

Since the DDS format uses some compression you can expect things to look slightly different. Is the upper part only gray, because in that case the colour should remain gray. For every cell of 4x4 pixels the DXT3 and DXT5 compressions only use 4 colours. If you have more than the quality of the image will be affected.
 
After some experimentation this appears to be a 32-bit vs 16-bit problem. Within Photoshop I tried saving as 16-bit BMP and the blotches appeared (I didn't even go as far as using FSX Image Tool). When I saved as 32-bit BMP all the greys were preserved, with no blotching.

So, what can I do in Photoshop (if anything) to successfully reduce the colour depth without causing blotching?

How should I do repaints in the future to avoid this?
 
Hi,

Why would you want to reduce your colour depth in Photoshop? There is no need to do so, just keep it at 32 bit and save it as a PSD file. After that import it into ImageTool and make the DXT version.
 
Hi Arno,

Thanks for your reply.

arno said:
just keep it at 32 bit and save it as a PSD file. After that import it into ImageTool and make the DXT version.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I was doing first, which prompted this thread.

I must be going wrong somewhere. Odds are it is something small and simple!

Andy
 
Try doing what Arno said and open the 32bit psd in ImageTool then try changing to 16bit-565 then the DXT type you need. Not sure if this will work correctly but the results look good in ImageTool. GL

Jon
 
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