Working with DDS files

[llewelyn]

I see that the GIMP now has a plugin available to work with DDS files directly. Seems to work, although I've yet to work out how to edit the alpha channel if I wanted to.

Also it's a tad quirky about saving: seems to work fine if you click "save as", then OK to overwrite the existing file, then it gives you a dialog box for format, and you can select DXT5 as a compression option. If you just hit save, it seems to save as uncompressed, and then in Haulin you get silly effects, I bet it does in ALH too but I've not checked.

GIMP is corss-platform too, and pretty powerful although some stuff is in odd places otr has uncommon names.

[Phantom 359]

i much prefer using this free software for editing .dds files:

www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/DXTBmp.shtml

click the blue download tab, NOT the red tab...

[llewelyn]

yeah, I have that too. But that requires to send the file to the image editor anyway, and GIMP is free, too, and will load DDS directly with the plugin installed. Seems to work well, provided you take note of the compression thing - I dare say there's an optino somewhere to make it default to DXT5, but I've not found it yet.

I gather the same applies to Adobe photoshop CS3, but that's a) expensive and b) bloatware.