Thank you MISTY for a great tutorial. PSP is underestimated in its power, yeah sure photoshop has all the 'just do it' buttons but PSP allows you the hands on way of dealing with things and in many cases can do the same if not more than photoshop =]

I have just read this and I would love to give it a go, however, I have PSP Photo X2 which is no longer a JASC product, it is instead now owned by Corel. I believe it is essentially to be PSP 12. The dds format is not in the file type listings with either of the Nvidia plugins, current or legacy. Is there any other option for creating a file of this type that anyone is aware of. Adobe is way too expensive to be changing graphic programs if there are any other options.

This is a little bit of a late post, however, it might still be useful, so here:

The DDS plugins found at this link:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/...ds_plugins.html
works with PSP Photo X2.

The simplest way to get them to work is to install them in your My Documents folder. Go to your documents, open the folder called "My PSP Files" and make a new folder called "Plugins". Install the DDS filter to this folder. You'll end up with something that should look like this (minus the Alien Skin folder):

Please note: You can put the plugin folder anywhere, I use the "My PSP Files" to keep things organized. The folder can also be named anything.

Now, open PSP Photo X2. Click "File" up in the left hand corner, and go down to "Preferences" and select "File Locations". In the window that pops up, select "Plugins" from the left hand pane, and click the "Add" button. Browse the the plugins folder that you just made and unpacked the DDS plugin into, and click "Ok".

You should end up with something similar to this:


Click ok, then close and restart PSP (this may not be necessary, but I do it anyway :p). You can now save and open DDS files. You can also save, open and edit normal maps with this plugin.

To be completely clear - I am currently using Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, with the above linked DDS plugin released by nVidia. It works perfectly, without issue, with PSP Photo X2.

Thank you for drawing me a picture!!! I couldn't have done it without all the images.

Just a quick question --

I've followed all of your steps, and made sure all images are 256x256, but when I go to combine the channels, they do not correctly overlap. I've tried everything I can think of, but the image on the red channel won't match up correctly with the green and blue channels. Any insight is much appreciated!

Thank You! This is very helpful.