Problem with specular mapping and speckles in exported PS CS5

[Krusty]

I'm running into a problem with spec mapping. I'm working in Photoshop CS5 extended. I'm working in RGB to be able to modify my existing skin layers and use them as selection templates to pick and choose which values I want for my specular layers, then just flattening and exporting those specular layers when I am ready.

I choose 126,126,126 for the base layer but I'm getting noise. Speckles. Specular speckles you might say.

I'm flattening layers first, then going to image -> mode -> grayscale. I've tried with and without an additional image -> mode -> indexed color after the grayscale step, but it doesn't change it.

My bitmaps are saved in 8-bit and they show up but there's all this:



All over the entire plane's surface I see it.

I poured a solid color into photoshop and exported again, just the 1 color, and still got speckles. Then I opened in MS paint, manually chose 126,126,126, selected all, deleted, and paint bucket filled back in with my custom color. Saved this and NO SPECKLES!

I need help on how to get photoshop to do some basic stuff. This never would have happened under my old Photoshop 5, but it doesn't run in Win7 so I'm stuck.


Please help? Anybody run into this yet, and possibly find a solution?

[cactuskooler]

Have you created your own bump map?  Or are you using the default bump map?

[Krusty]

This is my own bump map. When saving it I get "noise" which I cannot really detect visually no matter how much I zoom in on the .BMP file. If I create a blank file from MS Paint there's no noise, but using CS5 there is. Thus, it is most likely a problem with Photoshop, but a strange one to be sure.

[cactuskooler]

I had a similar, probably the same problem.  I thought it was the spec map at first too, but the bump map was the culprit.  I don't know what causes it specifically, but there's something about converting to grayscale that caused my noise.

Try this: In Photoshop open your layered bump map .psd (maybe a backup copy just in case).  Convert it to grayscale, image -> mode -> grayscale, but don't merge the layers.  Then create a new layer and fill it with gray, 126,126,126 or somewhere around there.  Put that layer below your panel lines, rivets, doo-dads, etc.  Now flatten the image and save as the 8-bit .bmp.

[Krusty]

Interesting.. I'll give it a try!

[Krusty]

Getting back to this.. I'm STILL having problems. It is, as you say, the software. Photoshop 5 never gave me this kind of crap! I literally can NOT get Photoshop to just give me a damned solid fill color for my bump map. I lucked out one ONE time only and somehow got a smooth file out of it. Subsequent files have all gone back to this problem.

I can't even SEE the speckles at 1000x magnification (or whatever maximum is) in 3 different software programs. They blend the edges of the pixels to make the minute changes undetectable.

I loaded the BMP in GIMP and at max zoom could spot them by dragging the image in small circles so I could see the odd-color pixels moving. Problem is I tried to then edit the PSD files and totally frakked up, saving the file over itself and losing a TON of layer settings and layer effects. Now I've got to revert back to PS CS5 and an earlier iteration of the file, rebuild my lost progress, and I STILL haven't got a way to stop this happening once I get back to the point I was at today.

SOOOO ANNOYING!!

[Chalenge]

Krusty, instead of changing modes have you tried the desaturate function? (Adjustments ---> Desaturate  OR Shft+Ctrl+U)

[MotleyCH]

Try installing PS5 onto a USB drive on a XP machine. After it's installed, put the USB drive in your Win7 machine and run it.

[Krusty]

I copied it over and all the dlls required, etc... It doesn't even run the executable. Just crashes. It's really old.