[Windows Mobile Software Development] eidolen:
First, thanks for the reply. I really do appreciate the hand holding till I get a grasp on things. i really am trying to learn.

*DirectDraw Surface Textures*

DDS is Micro$oft's implementation of texture compression. It's seems more wide spread than ATI's version. A google search on CTES or even ATC gives links back to here so it was hard to find information to learn about the format. I only used DDS as a reference for texture compression in general. The Compressonator also supports the DDS format.

Yeah I do understand that point. When I tried the tutorial just as a learning exercise I saw that some of the images didn't look any different at all but of course I found out that the larger more detailed images were a little rough. That is what brought me to the point of selective scaling to improve performance. If you can cut the size in half for less detailed images without a hit in quality, I see no reason not to.

That is a shame to hear.

Uploading it.

I did take the size into account. If you read this file in Manila Editor it is reported to be 512x256. Maybe this is where all the problem with this file originates. Could it not be reading the file correctly?

I think that was a bad example. I noticed that the prevalent format for texture compression is TGA anyway which if I'm correct it lossless as well. Basically I was trying to ask if a full non compressed image at half scale would be near the quality of a highly compressed image at full scale but I see now that it doesn't really apply. All the compression is done by the texture compression engine and it doesn't help to compress it in your graphics program before hand. (Sorry for the dumb question.)

I don't think that's your fault. lol

Basically I confused myself. The fact that png files are compressible threw me into thinking that maybe I could use no compression at all in my graphics program and then scale the image by half, in effect making a trade-off. I see now the flaw in my thinking. Especially since I really did know know that png compression is lossless.

And just in case, here is the relevant stdout of that file so you can see if the command was wrong.

C:\Documents and Settings\Eidolen\My Documents\HTC_Themeing\Gimp\Compressonator\1IN>cfc -qa 3f00cd2f
_manila 3f00cd2f_manila.atc
CFC v0.2 - Copyright (C) 2008 Chainfire

Reading file: 3f00cd2f_manila
Error: file is not QTC format

C:\Documents and Settings\Eidolen\My Documents\HTC_Themeing\Gimp\Compressonator\1IN>cd ..

C:\Documents and Settings\Eidolen\My Documents\HTC_Themeing\Gimp\Compressonator>cfc -qaf 1IN 1CTES
CFC v0.2 - Copyright (C) 2008 Chainfire

00ad7edb_manila :: conversion succeeded
00afe732_manila :: conversion succeeded
0a55fae4_manila :: conversion succeeded
0a681365_manila :: conversion succeeded
0aa5b915_manila :: conversion succeeded
0afb0813_manila :: conversion succeeded
0b358306_manila :: conversion succeeded
0b6e7d9a_manila :: conversion succeeded
0b6fd609_manila :: conversion succeeded
0c175082_manila :: conversion succeeded
0c6d0e94_manila :: conversion succeeded
0c7824d8_manila :: conversion succeeded
0c8a3d59_manila :: conversion succeeded
0c9c55da_manila :: conversion succeeded
0cae6e5b_manila :: conversion succeeded
0cc086dc_manila :: conversion succeeded
0cfe494a_manila :: conversion succeeded
0d1412f9_manila :: conversion succeeded
0d232023_manila :: conversion succeeded
0d465002_manila :: wrong format
0dd123e0_manila :: conversion succeeded
0e2126fe_manila :: conversion succeeded
0e9373a8_manila :: wrong format
0eb1cdd7_manila :: conversion succeeded
0ebd692a_manila :: conversion succeeded
0ee99cb5_manila :: wrong format
0eff39f3_manila :: wrong format
0f3461ce_manila :: conversion succeeded
0f859ad2_manila :: conversion succeeded
0fb366f5_manila :: conversion succeeded
1a9bc8d1_manila :: conversion succeeded
[COLOR="Red"]3f00cd2f_manila :: wrong format[/COLOR]

Cheers,

Eidolen