Programs for Clothing and Texture design..

I see a majority of people using Photoshop 7 or with CS , but , what I am wondering is, could i use CorelDraw Suite 11 or Fireworks?

any input on this would be great.....

Rutain

Any program that can create TGA files with alpha channels will work. So, form your list that's a no to Fireworks and a yes to Corel Draw. From the suite, Photopaint should do what you want.

For clothing specifically, you need something that can read PSD files with layers. Freworks and Photopaint can both do that. Again though, Fireworks won't be able to save the right kind of file for output.

But what is the file extension the clothes and textures need to be exported to for upload?

I am thinking Fireworks maybe able to export in quite a few extensions, either that or will design what i want i that , have PS import it then export it from there....

thank you
Rutian

It needs to be a targa format file ( .tga ) to save alpha transparency. It IS possible to import .jpg images, if they have no transparent parts, but the image quality is more lossy.

Yes, you could certainly design it in Fireworks, and if you can't get Fireworks to save .tgs files, export it to Photoshop as a .jpg and do a save-as there to .tga .

Good luck!

As I said earlier and Ceera repeated, the format you need to use is TGA. For more info on it, see the "Why TGA" section of my Transparency Guide at the top of this forum.

SL can also import JPEG and BMP, but there are some compelling reasons not to use those formats as a habit. Again, see the guide for more details.


The formats Fireworks can produce are GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, PICT, TIFF, and WBMP. The first 3 are web formats. I wouldn't recommend using them for this purpose. In fact, I would strongly caution against using GIF or JPEG since, among other reasons, both are lossy. PNG is a bit better, but it's still not 100% lossless.

BMP is the oldest and simplest of the bunch. As you probably know if you're a Windows user, BMP is used all over the place in Windows. All of the desktop images that come with Windows, for example, are BMP's. It is lossless, which is good, but it does not support transparency or layers, which would make export to Photoshop a bit watered down.

PICT is sort of like BMP's Mac equivilent. Prior to OSX, it was the format used internally by the Mac OS. It's antiquated now. Not much point in using it.

WBMP is for wireless devices. No point in using it.

That just leaves TIFF, which is the only one of the bunch I'd suggest using for export to Photoshop. TIFF is lossless, it supports transparency, and it supports layers. It is the format of choice for photographic archival, and is commonly used in many proffessional applications. It's the hands down winner here.

However, I question the wisdom in starting with Fireworks in the first place. Fireworks is a great program for web graphics, but if you're going to use Photoshop anyway, why not just go Photoshop the whole way? By what you've already said in this thread, I take it that your answer probably that you have Photoshop, but you happen to be less practiced at using it that you are with Fireworks.

Well, with all due respect to Fireworks, make the switch already. While there are some people who are attached to Fireworks out of familiarity, and so end up using it for texturing, it's really not meant for it. 99.999999% of texture artists use Photoshop. It's well worth getting comfortable with it. If you're already adept at other graphics programs, you'll find that learning Photoshop comes very quickly. It's really just a question of finding where everything is, which you'll discover is pretty intuitive if you already have some understanding of graphics principles.

Hi Rutain!

I agree with Chosen that as long as you already have Photoshop, it will make your life simpler if you learn to use it well enough to just make clothing there. (Besides, it's really not difficult to learn enough to do SL clothing.)

However, I would say that if you want to keep using Fireworks, don't overlook the PICT image format. Unlike .bmp, it does save alpha channels, it's not lossy, and it makes smaller files than TIFF. So if you have an image without layers, and limited desk space, there's still reason to use it.

If you have layers, on the other hand, go with TIFF, as Chosen said.

Honestly, though, you'll have much more flexibility just using PS for the entire process.

I didnt really expect the masters to even read this, so , I thank you again...

I have spent a pretty penny for a copy of PS CS v8 and have downloaded Daz Studio, with Poser.... so... i guess its just a matter of figuring out the layes on the Clothing and Body templates Linden and you guys have provided. I plan on using a combination of Fireworks, CorelDraw11 to get my textures and pen art sorted out and end up finishing the jobs with PS. I will do this till i really get comfortable with PS and then I will only use the other 2 for certain things that PS cant do.

Just to tell you I am a website designer / Web based graphics designer. When i went to school to chose to do the Macromedia / Corel end of the graphics part of it, and stayed away from Front Page and Photoshop..... never saw the need, till now..lol

Thank again...

Rutain.