Everyone's got their preferred methods. Knowing how methodologic you are Preach yours are probably better.

I tend to do alot of modifying existing textures so my method works for what I'm doing.

And yeah, converts from brand new textures typically have alot of issues, it's rare that you won't have to repaint some once they're in the game.

As opposed to merging two different versions I tend to try pixel painting now. I find it's alot easier than you'd think to achieve reasonable results - especially with cloning tools.

A recurring problem (I haven't found a decent yardstick to solve it yet) is that artists get too focused on what they see in the art program and don't develop the conceptualisation of what it will actually look like in game. 

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions, it's very much appreciated.

@Preach:
I have been using Gimp for my image editing for the past 9 or 10 years, so your tips are great. I was trying to figure out how I could get a copy of the Quake palette into Gimp, as I only see a file called palette.lmp or something, and I have no idea how to open or convert the .lmp file into something usable -- could you post your Gimp palette somewhere for me?

Basically what I am doing is using the full size 24bit JPEG textures for the level, but want to make the ones appearing on standard Quake at least not look totally awful/broken. I was experimenting tonight with using the texture overrides, and it looks great when it works (I've run into an issue where the overrides are working in Dark Places on one OS, but not on another, no idea why).

One thing I have noticed even with the 24bit JPEG textures, is that Quake (at least my Dark Places) expects textures to be a bit dark, as light cast onto fairly bright/vibrant textures makes them way too bright and washed out to see clearly. So I think I'll be darkening most of the textures a bit. 

palette.lmp can probably be loaded as a RAW image, if you specify 3 bytes per pixel, 16 pixels wide, 16 pixels tall (for 256 pixels.) With the image loaded maybe you can generate a palette file from the colors in the image? I know in photoshop you could switch to indexed color and choose "exact colors" for the palette generation method. 

I know in photoshop you could switch to indexed color and choose "exact colors" for the palette generation method.

this is what i did. in fact, i went even further: i created palettes for only fullbrights, without fullbrights, only flame fullbright, etc... also, when converting, it pays to sometimes make a custom palette with say, all blues removed (or maybe only bright blues removed) to make it look right with the dithering.

also, the type of dithering you use has an impact as well. some textures will look good with a pattern dither, other times varying levels of diffusion will look better, and noise is good for smooth, but non-repetitive stuff. 

i created palettes for only fullbrights, without fullbrights, only flame fullbright, etc...

what i meant was i'd take the full palette image with all 256 colours, and then change all the colours i didn't want to black. then i'd go back to index mode and save the exact palette photoshop made. 

Yeah, you can create a palette from an existing image, find something in quake colours, then right click on an existing palette, select import palette, and choose the image as your source. But for ease of use:

http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/zzquake.zip

Both palettes included. 

"Also, is there any way to use a custom 8bit palette for Quake?"

Yes.

The Half-Life map format.

Supported engines: DarkPlaces, ProQuake, Qrack, FuhQuake, ezQuake, Telejano, FTEQW

Tutorial to add HL map support:

http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=1358 

tik,kulo 

in spite with this particular as bathing may be also enjoyable, in no way get far from your toddlers within of the bath tub by themselves. ordinarily attend for the little one to stop petty accidents <strong>bottes ugg soldes</strong> 

here's a list of bugs that i've found during the use of the editor.
http://necros.quaddicted.com/temp/qe3_bugsAndWishList100.txt

also a few features i'd love to have, but aren't absolutely required.

Mostly for baker, but Sikkpin, if you ever swing on by again... ^_^ 

I can't promise any fast action on this.

But we damn well need a good open source map editor and I'm a stubborn bastard and have no intention of going anywhere. 

At some random time, I may be asking you questions about how to "tune" this editor.

And I'll make some sort of grand Windows installer for it that sets it up all nice and neat [like the Quake Adapter for Worldcraft 3.3 that I made in '06] or maybe I'll recode QER a bit to make it happen. 

It installs worldcraft in c:\program files, and not c:\programs files (x86) in windows 7. Not so grand. 

Sheesh! In 2006, who knew what the future held. No Vista, no Windows 7, 64-bit existed in the fringe. It was a creation of that era and I didn't know better nor did I know what the future held. 

either ask here or just go ahead and send me emails. i don't mind discussing this kind of thing.
thanks. :) 

I'm happy that someone is interested in continuing the work on this editor. I felt bad for leaving it out to dry like that (especially for necros who put a lot of time into the editor, mapping, documenting bugs and all that) but I've just never had the time to get back into it, and any free time I did have was used for idTech 4 stuff.

Anyway, I have a build here that may be newer than the last version I put up, but I'm not sure. It's been years since I've touched this shit. If anyone's interested, I can zip it up and upload a raw dump of my files. It may not have anything new but who knows... 

i was pretty impressed with the stuff you did on the d3w forums so it was worth it, i think. :)

i have QuakeEd 3 beta build 105, but then again, i have two executables that are build 105 but have different timestamps and file sizes.

probably safe to upload your files. 

Was a version of QE3 with multiple 2D views ever publically released? It's been a long while for me as well since using this, and I don't have a PC box around to check.

It largely comes down to philosophical differences and preferences, and it's not too big a deal to tab between 2d views, but with a nice big hi-res screen it would be nice to see everything at once, even if it's slightly redundant.

Also, everything necros said about bugs and features. All that's a higher priority than extra 2d views really. 

yeah... sikk programmed in a bunch of great presets that can make it look like almost anything. on top of that, you can do whatever you want with the windows and they snap together.

aside from those numerous bugs, i still find this to be my ideal editor. i wish you could customize the hotkeys though. i mean, we've got quake where you can bind anything to everything, yet the editor has builtin hotkeys. :P never really considered the irony of that before. 

Could you bundle up your latest and upload and post link here? Doesn't matter if it has bugs.

Uploading to a public thread is superior to private communications, you can't rule out other parties with an interest in your work or with useful things to say about QER. 

If its a viable alternative when the next version is up (which it sounds to be) then I'll switch to it. 

i remembered another bug that wasn't on the original list i posted. i've updated the list:
qe3_bugsAndWishList101

the only addition is this:
Vertex Manipulation: The area around a vertex/edge dot that is selectable appears to be a fixed size. ie: If you zoom in, the selection area is huge and if you zoom out far enough, it's pretty much impossible to select a vertex. the selection size should be constant, irregardless of zoom level. 

What about the source? Shouldn't that be included in every release? What license is the original QuakeEd source under? I'd like to look at how you are doing vertex manip in this editor. 

Then it's gpl. 

A bit hard to find, you'll need to look through to find it.