The Plugin

You need a special plugin for Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or GIMP to be able to save DDS files

Installation

Unpack the zipfile and copy dds.8bi into your Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Plug-Ins\Import-Export\ folder. Make sure it is within your Import-Export folder !





Saving a DDS file without an Alpha Chanel

Saving a DDS file with an Alpha Chanel

If this error occurs

If error above occurs, than check if the texture size is correct, sometimes Photoshop does not calculate correctly. The plugin only excepts sizes that are importable by UnrealEd ! For instance, if you have a texture 512 x 2048, scale it down to 1024 while it constrains proportions. The result in Photoshop will be: 258 x 1024 while it should be: 256 x 1024 (try it yourself for the heck of it)

The plugin will have all options active, but the Safe option will stay blanc...........

Not just that, if you correct the size, and try to safe it again, it still will refuse to safe, the only option is to restart Photohop to make it work again......................

The initial problem is an Photoshop bug, and all version including the latest CS2 Photoshop still have this error.





Annoying things

Saving DDS files, aaaaaaaaaaarg.

Depending on how big the file is, and how complex the coloration is, saving can take alot of time. And not just that, while it is calculating the compression, your computer will freeze for the big part. So if your saving a large DDS file, dont be surprised if your complete system freezes 1 minute up to 30 minutes for a big complex file.

Apart from that, no, your computer is just fine, its just the calculations doing it. So you know whats going on..................





Work precise

Just to make sure there will be no conflicts later on, just follow next rules:

- Make sure you save your original work file as PSD file while containing all layers, guidelines and Alpha channels !!!!!

After that:

- Delete all guidelines.
- Delete all Alpha channels if present, of course EXCEPT the Alpha channel that you use for Masking, again......., if present.
- Flatten your image.
- Resize the the image to the size you want it to be.
- Safe your file as DDS without Alpha channel according the EXACT settings as seen above.
- Or safe your file as DDS with Alpha channel according the EXACT settings as seen above.

Following above rules will make sure you will end up with a clean, garbagefree, conflictfree good mergable file :)

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