TGA to Index issues, please help!

[Spudkopf]

I’ve taken a minor step outside my own self imposed no mod stance and extracted some default skins so I can re-use them as a basis to create my own custom user skins. I’ve doing simular things for years using other indexed or RGB templates. When altering indexed files up to RGB and back I always make a custom colour table before I start and then re-apply the table when re-indexing the file to avoid any or as much loss as possible. And when RGB template I fully understand that when reducing it to 256 that loss will be expected.

However I’m a little confused when it comes to the TGB/TGA files that I have extracted, as follows: I have extracted the summer default TGB skin for the Hs129-B2 using sfs extractor, then renamed the extension to TGA, which I have then opened with ViewIMF-V1_0.exe through which I have then save the file to a TGA format from within this program, I then proceed to open the new file for editing through Photoshop CS5.

Once inside PSCS5 the TGA file is a RGB (?) and not indexed to 256 colours as I epected, then any attempt to re-index even an un-altered original to 256 colours degrades much of the finer details (in regards to the Hs129-B2 skin this especially noticeable on the shadowed effect for fabric covered surfaces but is evident generally overall) no matter what combination of the index settings that I have attempted to use.

My first question is, are these imbedded default TBA/TBG skin files within the game actually RGB or are they indexed to 256 colours? If they are already indexed to 256 colours within the game, then why the big loss when I’m attempting to re-index them, am I doing something wrong, am I missing something?

Or is there some sort of lossless method that I can use to get the TGA into an indexed format so I can then create a custom colour table before I start editing the TGA file PSCS5?

My brain hurts!