I've been taking a break from TS3 creating, and now I'm starting to get back into it again. I have Paint Shop Pro 9 and had installed a plug-in for DDS files. It worked great before, I had no problem with it. Now I opened up PSP9 to edit some textures, and surprise surprise... I can no longer open DDS files. I've been all over the internet hunting for different downloads to try, and none of them have been working at all. I keep getting errors ranging from "Failed to load the plugin's DLL" to "Plugin can't read the requested format," and it's driving me batty. I have no idea why on earth mine stopped working, but every single time I try installing another dds.8bi, they all keep failing to work. I'm at my wits ends here. Does anyone have any suggestions I can try? This should not be this hard! Ugh.

I don't think it does work for 9? I think I have seen that said before. Do you have 7? Or is it that it won't work for 64bit versions of PSP... something like that.

I do have 9 (32-bit version) and it was working fine for some time until now, when it's all of a sudden just... not working anymore. It's the strangest thing. Maybe I should try looking into some free programs like GIMP (if there even is a DDS plug-in for GIMP?) if this keeps up.... I adore my PSP and know it like the back of my hand, so it's really frustrating that I can no longer use it for this kind of tihng!

My favorite for making DDSs is Paint.net, as I use a plugin for it that lets you make your alpha channel seperately as a png or similar, then use it as a transparency mask just before saving. So you're not actually having to work with a 4-channel image all the time, which is what seems so complicated in all the other image apps.

Wat OS are you running?
Did you try un/installing PS 9 and all plugins?

I'm running Windows XP (I know, it's old! I'm not ready to move on yet! :P) and no, I didn't try uninstalling/reinstalling it yet! That might be a good idea. And Inge, I think I might have to look into Paint.net! Do you have to download a separate DDS plug-in for it too?

No it supports DDS natively, but there is a seperate plugin for if you want to import a seperate image as the alpha channel. The plugins can be found on their support forum.

This is the information I have about working with alpha channel in PaintNet

Paint.NET v3.5.5 http://paint.net/ •Paint.NET v3.1 and above has a built in DDS plug-in

Samelo22- plugins for altering alpha channels:

AlphaMask (to change a picture to transparent by ticking "Invert Mask" box)
http://paint.net.amihotornot.com.au...ers/Alpha_Mask/

AlphaSpace (to change black or white color into transparent color, by selecting white if I color a zone in white or selecting "Black" if I colore in black and move the scale to make this color transparent).
http://paint.net.amihotornot.com.au...ers/AlphaSpace/

Daluved1-http://paint.net.amihotornot.com.au/Features/Effects/Plugins/Object/Channel_Mask/

Put .dll files in the "Effects" file in "Paint.Net" and they appear in the "Effects" menu.

Link to more PaintNet plugins http://paint.net.amihotornot.com.au...ad/PluginsPack/

Inge, can you please tell us which plugin you use, it sounds very interresting.

This one: http://forums.getpaint.net/index.ph...port-plugin-20/

Thank you Inge. I didn't know that one yet.