How to make .PAA?

[Celery]

Stupid question I know, but I found nothing with search and all I have is TexView and some broken Photoshop plugin, the image quality is quite bad. How to make clear and non-dithered .PAA files?

[ProfTournesol]

I'm using paatool and it works great IMHO. Official tool is Texview 2, don't like it but it may be more suitable for ArmA.

[william1]

if i'm not mistaken you can save png images with photoshop and open them with texview 2, then save them as paa

[Synide]

How to make clear and non-dithered .PAA files?

That all depends on what your current methods of producing an image are... Eg. You apprear to use Photoshop. What file format do you save your image as when finished in Photoshop? Etc.

Have your image as RGB 8bit/channel.
Save as it out as a .tga 32bit. If don't don't specifically want an alpha channel then save it as 24bit .tga. But, I recommend always saving as 32bit.
I only really ever use .png format when dealing with terrain related images.
Always use the naming convention for your images and always use TexView2 and/or pal2pace.
With Keg's paa plugin you cannot gaurantee that you will save the image with the appropriate settings and/or it will save the image with the appropriate transformations to the channels etc. that may or may not be required for the various types of images depending on there intended use in ArmA.
This is what TextView2 & pal2pace are for... coercing the given image into the appropriate format based on the naming convention of the file.
BIS provide these tools for a reason... use them.

With respect to your specific question regarding how to make a clear and non-dithered .paa if you describe your current method then perhaps we can highlight any flaws in what you may be doing.
I suspect if you set RGB/8bit and save as 32bit .tga with the naming convention and use TexView2/pal2pace then you should be hunky-dory.

[Celery]

I was using TexView1 with tga. paaTool and the PS plugin either crash or give files with errors and TV1 just gives bad image quality. I tried TexView2 and I'm finally getting what I want!

[wipman]

Hi, for make .paa's i use various programs: PaaTool 1.1, TexView2, AlTexView. I never used
any PS plugin for make the .paa's, i first make a .tga (32 bits) with the PS and then i use
one of those programs for transforms the .tga into a .paa . The one that i've used the most
if not the only one (now for the ArmA) is the TexView2 which can be found in the BIS Official
Tools, and i never had much problems... maybe some crashes with really large images, 2048x2048
or bigger ones; but mainly what i use to make any .paa is the PS to make a (32bits) .tga
and then the TexView2 to convert it to .paa . Let's C ya

[Dr_Eyeball]

Same here. I don't use any 'dependent' external tools or plugins.

- Just create a png file in any program.
- Open png with TexView2
- 'Save as' changing extension to paa

Do the opposite for the reverse.

TexView2 is a bit misleading since the 'Save As' dialog 'Save as type' filter doesn't explicitly say which formats it supports.
The BIKI TexView_2 only says it supports paa and pac files.
I like to find out exactly which formats it does support and update the wiki. I know it can also read png, jpg. It can save png. Haven't tried other formats.

[[APS]Gnat]

Or if your doing addons, make everything in TGA, and let O2 or V3 do the rest for you.