Arctool extracted dds texture files issue

[cinderry]

I carefully followed various tutorials on forums, YouTube, etc, and managed to use ArcTool with pc-dd to open up a specific arc file and eventually get a dds file, hoping to tinker in Gimp or Paint.net.

 

[i actually did the same using the Arc and Texture Extractor tool, as a matter of interest].

 

In both cases, when I opened the dds file, all I got was a small square file which looked like a fuzzy black circle.

 

I tried this with various other arc files, both originals from the rom folder, and also arc files from various mods, and only got the same little fuzzy black ball ...

 

Now these were clothing files, so as an experiment I followed the YouTube tutorial, which was to retexture a knife, so the arc file was from the wep rather than eq folders in rom.

 

This time, both in Gimp and in Paint.net, the dds of the knife opened up perfectly!

 

So far, I have not managed to get any clothing dds to open up into a full file which can be edited.

 

I'm baffled why this procedure works for one type of file (eq) but not another (wep) ... obviously other people can get eq files opened using this procedure, what can I be doing wrong?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.