GIMP 2.0x

[Devil 505]

Sure. Send it.

[Vraciu]

Oh, wait.   I still can't get GIMP to open he PSP file in order to convert it...   So I'm basically stuck.

Gonna' try one more technique.   I think I ultimately need a PSP plugin though.

[Vraciu]

I figured it out--for now.   I created a BMP in PSP7, then opened it in GIMP.  I added the transparent layer and saved it as 32-bit.  I did go ahead and open it in PAINT then saved it again.    I had the problem the same as before until I went into graphics settings and changed the texture size from 512 to 4096.

I'm confused, why do you need to load PSP files into Gimp? I just save the file as a 24-bit bmp in PSP and then load this bmp into Gimp, add a transparency layer and then re-save it as a 32-bit bmp.

HT fixed the problem with the offline game and skin viewer not being able to read current Gimp bmps correctly some time ago. There may possibly still be an issue with the program that converts our files into a "res" file for online use but its a moot point as there is no way to submit a skin with the newer header size anyway. This is because the Skins Admin site rejects skins saved with any version of Gimp later than 2.06 for having some files with the wrong bit count. Apparently re-writing the page to accept files with a range of sizes is not a trivial task.

So currently we have to use 2.06. Or use a later version of Gimp to convert the bmp and then re-save this bmp with MS Paint, which restores the older header size.

For normal maps I've installed the Nvidia plug-in directly into PSP.

So, as long as I open and SAVE versus SAVE AS (which doesn't give me a 32-bit option, only 24) then it remains 32-bit?

[Greebo]

Devil's Gimp 2.6 and my 2.06 are the same thing, I just got used to phrasing it that way in BBS threads so it was obvious it is a prior version to Gimp 2.10. I'll stop doing it now as its just confusing people.

My method is to save the 24-bit bmp in PSP, open this bmp in Gimp, then "Layer/New Layer", check the "Transparency" button is selected, then hit "OK". Then with 2.6 I hit "File/Save as" (with 2.10 its changed to "Export as"), then click on the various windows' buttons that come up to save it. With 2.10 I then open this file in MS Paint and hit the save icon.

I just did a test with 2.6 and 2.10 plus Paint on both a 1024 res and 2048 res file. Having re-saved the file using Gimp I right clicked on its desktop icon and selected "Properties" in order to check the "Size" stat in bytes. These are the results:-

Gimp 2.6 32-bit 1024 res file:- 4,194,360 bytes
Gimp 2.10 32-bit 1024 res file:- 4,194,442 bytes

Gimp 2.6 32-bit 2048 res file:- 16,777,270 bytes
Gimp 2.10 32-bit 2048 res file:- 16,777,354 bytes

In both cases opening the 2.10 file in MS Paint and hitting the "Save" icon restored the size to the same as the 2.6 file. So if you want to make sure your 32-bit files are OK to submit just make sure their size matches the 2.6 results above.

[Vraciu]

Good stuff.  Thank you for the data.