Texture creator/editor for MAC (tiger)?

ok ok..i know......some of u will just skip this instantly bored and some will skip it with a cynical geekesque smile........but what i need right now is just as much info as possible on creating a texture using my own photos and making them seamless and ready for export in .tga format....is there any good standalone soft for mac?.......or if its Photoshop again please advise briefly on "how to"...............no, i am not lazy just having too much life going on at the moment...

........another.......side question.....what is the "best" dpi resolution for textures in targa format at 1024 x 1024 pixels size?........is it 72 dpi enough for the "high quality" texture?

thanx soooo much...........


shtax

Photoshop is the "gold standard" of image editing software.

But if you're looking for something cheaper, you can download Gimp at www.gimp.org. It's a little clunkier than Photoshop but it gets the job done, and it's free. The Mac version runs under X windows so the interface is nonstandard.

The other option is Pixelmator, which has an ultra-slick Mac interface but is lacking some features Photoshop has. It's pretty cheap ($59) and a good value for the money.

DPI makes absolutely NO difference when you are preparing textures for viewing on line. That parameter only makes sense when you are sending an image to a printer, where the number of dots per inch is relevant. When a texture appears on a monitor, the number of pixels displayed per sq. inch of the screen depends on how much you zoom in or out when you view it. You can set DPI to 72 or 720 or 7200 and the image will look the same on your monitor.

It is very true that screens work at 72 ppi.
So,
Don't use textures that are way higher in resolution because its not going to make any difference to how they look onscreen, but will make a big difference at how long it takes to download.

OK. There may be the exception where you want to take a single texure and spread it over a large area - like a detailed building facade - but other than that, for SL and all web applications, images should always be optimized to 72 ppi.

No, changing dpi won't have any effect on your upload time either. A 1024 x 1024 pixel image has the same number of pixels in it at 72 dpi and at 720 dpi. File size does not change when you change dpi, and therefore neither does upload time. And again, unless you are preparing your texture for printing, dpi makes no difference whatsoever. The NUMBER of pixels used to create your image does -- hence the reason why a 512 x 512 image has higher resolution on screen than a 128 x 128 image -- but the physical size of the image (and thus its pixel density in ppi) depends on how much you blow it up on your monitor.

BTW, it isn't even true that all monitors use a 72 ppi standard. They're all over the map.