when i try and skin the default sky file(sky_yav2.tga) it is extreemly bright during the game. How would i avoid that?

its the alpha. try finding a sky that uses less alpha (like mustafar's sky) and saving it as sky_yav2.tga and then editting it. There's some way of lowering the alpha manually in Photoshop. I dunno if its possible in GIMP.

i think you can with Gimp, actually. There's a thread somewhere recently that explains it

i use gimp and i think you can lower the alpha. so should i use a different sky skin for custom skies and then overwrite the default in my world?