Tips for creating aircraft repaints

There really are so many ways you can repaint an aircraft, and achieving a professional finish is easy once you know what you are doing.
In this post i will point out some of the techniques i use to get the best results with the least amount of effort, if you haven't done so already i suggest reading my guide to repaints.

This is not a step by step walk through and a basic knowledge of your image editor really helps, here I am using photoshop but most of these techniques can be transferred over to whatever editor you use.

Tip 1: Finding Photographs of the aircraft.

Unless you are doing a fictional paint scheme you are going to need some images and photographs of the aircraft to base your repaint off. I personally use Google Image search to find the majority of photos i use but there are also a number of websites that are dedicated to aircraft photography, the trick here is finding photos with enough angles to really get a good idea of what the paint scheme consists of.

Tip 2: Paint Kits

When i first started out repainting aircraft i had no idea what a paint kit was and still managed to get nice results working with a flat image, if you can get a paint kit for your aircraft though, you will realize how much easier they make your job. There are a lot of kits already out there for different aircraft, try searching for the name of the aircraft you are working on + paint kit + fsx/fs9.
If you cant find a paint kit i really suggest making one, it does take a fair amount of time to create a quality kit, but once you have, it can be used for any future repaints you do. The amount of time and effort it saves when you want to paint a new scheme is well worth the effort, take a look at my tips on creating paint kits.

Tip 3: Work with layers

Work with multiple layers making it easier to make minor changes without affecting the whole repaint, make sure to name each of your layers with something descriptive to save confusion.
Some examples of the layers i used for the "Bronco" repaint are;

Background: This is the original texture that i will be repainting, i don't like to work directly on this image.
Work Layer: This layer i use for doing the base color scheme for the aircraft, using the lasoo tool to select the shape of the aircraft fuselage or wing and then painting in the base colors with either the paintbrush or the paint bucket tools.
Graphics: I use this layer to add more detail to a paint scheme, things like logo's and patterns as well as any text.
Rivets and Labels: These two layers are part of the paint kit adding detail such as the lines, rivets of the fuselage and warning labels.
These are just a few examples, the basic idea is to work with a separate layer for each addition you add to the new paint scheme, this way when you mess up you don't have to scrap the whole thing.
To keep all of the layers separate, save it as a psd (this is useful if you want to continue working on it at a later time), saving as a bitmap image will automatically flatten the image.

Tip 4: Colors and Logos

If you are creating a real world paint scheme it helps to have a photo of the aircraft to base your design on. Another purpose this can serve is in helping you get the colors right and by using the eyedropper tool you can sample the colors directly from the photo itself (just keep in mind that the color of the aircraft will depend on the lighting and age/quality of photo.)
If you are lucky enough to get a quality image, you can copy any complex designs or logos on the aircraft's tail or fuselage directly from the photo, this saves you having to try and recreate from scratch, you can also find images of the company logos using Google Image Search.