Useful plugins for Adobe Photoshop CS6. Useful plugins for Adobe Photoshop CS6 How to install the dds plugin

Lyrics:

All textures for games from Bethesda, and, in particular, Skyrim are presented in the format .dds. This format can contain several sizes of the same texture. Any texture size cannot be used, only: 8 , 16 , 32 , 64 , 128 , 256 , 1024 , 2048 and so on. All resources are packaged in .bsa archives with appropriate names. Textures are also called maps. Each diffuse map(color texture) is accompanied by at least normal map , the exception is textures for effects and the like. There is a good write-up about normal maps at Vicky. In short, normal maps make a low-poly model look high-poly by adding all sorts of little bumps and bumps, and it’s also purple and has a marker _n(texture name_n.dds) or, now also, _msn, so it is impossible to make a mistake when identifying it. Is there some more glow map , which determines which areas of the texture will glow and which will not, has a marker _g. And also, exclusively for Skyrim, introduced new map- gloss mask, has a marker _m, determines, when used (that is, if it is not added, then there will be no gloss anywhere on the model), which part of the texture will reflect the environment and to what extent. The Oblivion engine itself finds and loads correctly labeled maps, but for Skyrim you need to force all the maps into the model, and each one into its own special slot. That, in general, is all.

Tools:

1. Adobe Photoshop
2. A plugin for Photoshop from Nvidia for working with the .dds format and creating normal maps.
3. Some kind of unpacker for .bsa archives. For example [b]BSA Browser by Fawzib Rojas .
4. Important!
Straight arms. 5. Know a little English language

. A little bit.

Practice:
It is assumed that Photoshop is already installed, and we can communicate with it more or less tolerably. Install the NVidia plugin , it will add the ability for Photoshop to work with the .dds format and an item in the menu.
Filter -> NVIDIA Tools -> NormalMapFilter To extract texture from BSA archive , open the downloaded BSA Browser , in it we will open (Menu -> File -> Open...) the BSA archive we need (Path to the folder Skyrim\Skyrim\Data\ Skyrim - Textures.bsa ), select the files we need and extract them. This unpacker offers two extraction options: to a random folder (Menu -> Action -> Extract To ...) or directly to(Menu -> Action -> Extract). A folder hierarchy, in both cases, will be created automatically.
Open the texture in Photoshop. When opened, the plugin will ask for reading settings in the following window:

It is better to mark everything as in the image, except for the last checkbox, here it is at your discretion: if you want to see this window every time, leave the checkbox, if you don’t want to, remove it. Paragraph Load MIP Maps is responsible for opening all or one texture size, I recommend turning it off. We don't need to open all the sizes; they will be automatically generated when the texture is saved.
Changing the texture. I will not expand this item now, we are only interested in the settings.
Now save . Here a slightly more complicated window will pop up:

Let's look at it in more detail:
The top drop-down list contains optimization settings and the presence/absence of an alpha channel and its type. We are not interested in all points, only 4

DXT1 RGB- select it for all textures without an alpha channel
DXT5 ARGB- for all textures with alpha channel
8.8.8 RGB- saving without compression and alpha channel
8.8.8.8 ARGB- no compression with alpha channel

The last 2 points are not particularly worth exploiting, because the weight of the texture will be much greater; they are justified for textures with very smooth transitions colors over large areas (for example, a normal map for faces, if saved with compression, then ugly artifacts will appear on the characters’ faces)

Generate MIP Maps- with additional size (most common option)
Use Existing MIP Maps- select additional sizes by yourself
No MIP Maps- without additional sizes

When saving with additional generation. sizes can be selected in the drop-down list next to: All (all possible) or specify the desired quantity. I always put All.

Everything else, if you are not in the mood for experiments, we leave as in the image attached above; for our purposes it does not need adjustment.

Using special add-ons - plugins - can significantly simplify and speed up your work in Photoshop. Some plugins allow you to perform the same actions faster, others add various effects or have other auxiliary functions.

Let's look at several free useful plugins for Photoshop CS6.

This plugin allows you to quickly get HEX and RGB color codes. Works in conjunction with the Eyedropper tool. When you click on any color, the plugin places the code on the clipboard, after which the data can be entered into a style file or other document.

Size Marks automatically creates a size mark from a rectangular selection. In addition, the mark is placed on a new translucent background and helps in the designer’s work, allowing you to determine the sizes of elements without unnecessary manipulations and calculations.

A very useful plugin that allows you to search, download and insert images into a document. Everything happens right in the Photoshop workspace.

This plugin has been discontinued.

DDS

Developed by Nvidia. DDS plugin for Photoshop CS6 allows you to open and edit game textures in DDS format.

Another plugin for web designers. It includes many templates and standard grids. Built-in modules allow you to quickly create repeating page elements.

The so-called “fish generator”. Fish - meaningless text to fill out paragraphs on created layouts web pages. Is analogous online generators"fish", but works directly in Photoshop.

This plugin has been discontinued.

This is just a drop in the ocean of plugins for Photoshop CS6. Everyone will find the necessary set of add-ons that will increase the convenience and speed of working in their favorite program.

It's finished! After several years of waiting, Nvidia was honored to update its NVIDIA Plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop and introduced version support into it CS4, CS5 and x64 systems (although it would be more correct to say  64-bit software versions). Now amateurs and professionals from all over the world can finally stop jumping from the 64-bit version of Photoshop to the 32-bit version and back to create normal maps.

Nvidia Normal Map Filter and DDS Plug-in for 64-bit Photoshop (x64)

• NormalMapFilter  - a filter for Photoshop that can turn any image into a Normal Map. The algorithm works on the Height2Normal principle, i.e. in the original image, dark areas should correspond to depressions, and light areas should correspond to elevations. In other words, for correct processing, manual modification of the original image may be required (if you care about the quality of the result, of course). There are many customization options available for the filter, and there is also the ability to preview in 3D View mode.

• DDS Plug-In  - allows you to open and save textures compressed using the DXTC algorithm (.dds format), select the compression profile used, etc. The DDS (Direct Draw Surface) format is widely used for game development and is often used to compress textures of game models.

NVIDIA Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop (32-bit) (8.51.0301.0345)
NVIDIA Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop (64-bit) (8.51.0301.0345)
P.S. Be careful with all manipulations with your textures and always save your job before you apply one of the filters. In general, saving more often and in different files is good form.