[Martin Smith]

Maybe I'm missing something here but I seem to have stumbled upon a way of making 4k resolution DDS files that are about 1/10 the size they would normally be, and higher quality too...?

I have a skin folder with two 4k DDS files, one for the body and one for my helmet, plus a few other small files, and the whole folder is 3.7 MB. Previously, a single 4k DDS file would be >10 MB, which is more than the total allowed for any skin folder on SRS. So basically those files were unusable here.

Here's how I did it;

1- Create my skin in 4k resolution.
2- Save as PNG file.
3- Rename .PNG to .DDS
4- Profit

The only difference in the file creation is that the PNG format doesn't pick up any Alpha information for transparencies. If you want transparency you need to add it to the image itself (which can be simpler in many cases).

Here are the file sizes I end up with:
   
*I couldn't make a 4k file by saving as DDS, because my Photoshop crashes when I try. But the way the file sizes scale it would be 4x a 2k file, or 10.6 MB

I also compared the quality of the image and in this test on the side of a Transit van, the PNG version (bottom half) actually looks better than the version I saved directly as a DDS (top half) which seems to have some kind of artifacts in the form of vertical striations.
   

So it kinda makes no sense. Am I missing something here?