Paint Books

Very good book, that gives good advice on how to achieve more from PSP.

Really helpful! I am a beta tester for Corel and thought I "knew it all". Well, the book pointed out strengths that I had not been aware of. The scratch remover is great for removing blemishes and the "tooth whitener" is better than any dentist!

This book immediately provides the new user of PSP10 and Photo Album with confidence instilling guidance suited for both the beginner and the advanced user. Makes the whole tool-set usable and fills a big gap left by Corel in their documentation.

This is an excellent book; however, it doesn't cover the basics very well. I was disappointed and wish I had picked a different one. The illustrations are good, and it is useful, but not if you are looking for basics-and advanced.

This book is great for the digital photographer (and who isn't these days?), who may or may not be new to Paint Shop Pro. It teaches all the great techniques for not only improving pictures, but also has many suggestions for using them in fun and interesting ways.
PSP X is so economical it may seem to be like many of the other simplified graphic programs. However, it is a very powerful program if one knows how to use it. It is much easier to learn than it's pricier competitor, but it is impossible to learn it's many features without a book like this. It is a great deal more informative than the manual.
As one person pointed out, it doesn't teach all the newest features, but Corel has gone into great detail on these new features in their learning center, and the book directs you there. Why duplicate what Corel has done a good job on?
I have used PSP since version 4 (under JASC ownership), and found that I learned quite a lot of new info. Loved the book!

This is just a so-so book. It is most helpful for novice painters or total beginners. The projects in the book are relatively basic and they have been "done before" (many, many,many times). Professional and serious decorative painters will find the projects in this book elementary.

This book was not very useful to me as a professional decorative painter.

The book lacks both technical details and inspirations. Contains several basic boreing projects so meticulously drawn line after line as for to be copied. The "trompe l'oeil" title is too ambitious either. Sorry to admit but very like other books offered.

I have been using this book for a while now, and i would like to increase my previous review rating from 3 to 5 stars. I have had a chance to compare this book with other literature and i now realise what a great resource book it is. The instructions are easy to follow and i was able to apply the simple techniques it contains to the more elaborate trompe l'oeils that i wished to attempt - where other materials had led me to beleive that this would be beyond my ability. I have also come to appreciate the short and simple list of material needed for each project making this book a true source of inspiration.

This book could be of no help or inspiration to me for the decoration projects I have which are more "murals" like. The exemples depicted are fun, well detailed and well explained but cover mainly household items on shelves all in the modern folk art tradition. These can look really nice in a home but I have trompe l'oeil windows, arches and blue skies in mind for mine and couldn't find any in there. Number of stars depends on needs... and I need another book.

I just finished several "stone blocks" in my dining room, and I am almost embarrassed to say that I literally squealed with delight at how easy it was and how good it turned out! And I'm not a novice painter; I'm a NON-painter. Roberta Gordon-Smith is one of those gifted people who can teach her subject to anyone...truly. Thank you SO much =)

This book is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Perfect condition and rapid delivery. Excellent service.

This is a goog book to have.For amateurs like me this book breaks methods down to a step by step illustrated and recipes for paint effects and faux finishes. Worth it.

this book arrived in wonderful condition in the specified days.It has proved to have all the receipes I required an more.

This is a good general reference book. I am glad that I purchased it, but it isn't my faux painting Bible. However, if you are looking for many ideas, inspirations and photos, this is a good item for you. I am a seasoned amateur and for me, I need specific product references to really make the recipes work. This is more general. The bottom line; it is a nice book to own.

This book has many finishes and the instructions to complete each. For an experienced painter of faux finishes, this is too simple, but for a person just getting started ion doing this kind of work, this is a good instruction book.

I purchased this book for an artist friend as a gift and he reported that
it was a unique reference source for practical art materials usage and
a valuable asset to his art library.

Very useful compendium of formulas for painters, Mediums, Varnishes, etc.
Every painter knows that is a reference!
I highly recommend it.

Formulas For Painters

Love, love, love this book. It's got basic recipes for everything from sizing to varnish. If you've wondered about anything from wax to egg tempera, even fresco and of course the vital oil painting formulas. Great stuff. I love the retouch varnish - I use it all the time. If you are a painter that works with the real, old ingredients, and avoid the new crazy products, this is a great help.

Great little book for painters with tons of information. Tremendous value for price. Would not want to be without it on my shelf of reference books for oil and acrylic painters.

This is the manual that all others are compared to and remains the gold standard for basic instuction on painting materials.

PSP is one of the least intuitive software programs I've used.
Since using PSP is such a challenge, I thought getting a book on it would help and bought this one based on the online recommendations. I haven't found this book much help.

Simple things that are easy to do in other drawing programs, can take hours to figure out in PSP and often I give up in frustration. This is compounded by the way I use PSP, occasionally and infrequently. In between times, I forget anything I laboriously managed to learn.

This book hasn't been much help for the way I use PSP.

MAYBE if I read it all the way through, I could get more out of it. However, the way I want to use the book is to look up something in my own vocabulary like "apply a transparent color" and find all the steps needed to accomplish the task. That doesn't work. The book assumes I already know the PSP vocabulary or know/remember some tool/procedure explained in other chapters.

The humor is not a plus because after the double dose of frustration (frustration with using PSP and frustration at getting help from the book), I am not especially receptive to the humor.

Gertler's book takes you into what to do to get professional results using this feature-heavy software. Unlike tutorials found on the web and Jasc's own "Getting Started Guide," the book can be read away from your computer, allowing you to absorb principles that will make you a more savvy user. The reader comes away with a much better understanding than with approaches that just tell you to enter values like 70 for density, 10 for blur, 30 percent opacity. There are some annoying errors that an editor should have caught: misuse of "whom," confusion between "affect" and "effect," and mistakenly calling a bighorn sheep a mountain goat, but the author is right on with all the important stuff.

Pretty good book. Masks needed more in more depth coverage. Also there could have been more on editing photos.

I used to be quite suspicious of "Complete Idiot's Guide" series (and "For Dummies" as well) and would never buy a book without prior browsing it. But in this case I was fully convinced by the excellent recommendations of the reviewers and the relatively high (i.e. actually low) sales rank. So, when the book arrived, I eagerly started to look it through for selective topics and ... at once got disappointed because of the lack or even absence of the important material. For instance, just several short lines are dedicated to the Sharpen Menu, and the Unsharp Mask parameters are not explained at all. As for Histogram Functions, considered to be one of the most important tools, they are not even mentioned. Incredible! What's up? Am I a wrong reader? Not a "complete idiot"? May be. I don't know. I'm just returning the book and discouraging everybody from buying it.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Paint Shop Pro 7 by Nat Gertler is
a really good book to buy if you are buying Paint Shop Pro 7 for the very first time and have never used any of the previous versions of Paint Shop Pro.
This book is well written and it easily explains all of the applications it outlines.
However, I have been using Paint Shop Pro version 5 for about three years now and there was nothing in this book that I didn't already know.
The best way to find new tips and tricks that Paint Shop Pro 7 has is to read online tutorials and find sites set up for such instructions.
As my review title says, it's a "Good Book but only covers the basics"!

I'm not all the way through the book, but about 1/2 way. I was a total beginner to this and it was very step by step with very clear directions. It's been extremely helpful teaching me the basics.

I highly recommend this book as it is very user friendly and makes it easy to navigate around the program. Better than the book provided by Corel

This is really a great book. The exercises are very detailed and set out in a true "learning order." Based on these exercies the "doing order" is then quite obvious.

What would have made this book even better would have been full color. When Paint Shop Pro has a new version I sure hope Sonja does a new book. It will be one book I will surely purchase.

Regards
Mike Gorman

I was hoping for something that would show me more about dealing with photo enhancements rather than making graphic images. I did learn some things that helped me; but I will keep looking for a better PSPX book. The "how to" instructions were quite good for the examples; but I was hoping for more.

Very good book for a beginner to paint shop pro. Not something I would recommend for someone that has been using paint shop pro. I found it very basic and I had only been using PSP for a few months.

I bought this book several months ago, and I find it extremely informative and exciting. Iam a seasoned CorelDraw user, but this book taught me many new ideas and concepts to enhance my graphic design capabilities. The only draw back is that when I bought the book, a CD of exercises that are required through-out the book didn't come with the book I purchased.

Does any one out there know where I can purchase a CD with the exercises on it that's called out through-out the book ?

I am not an experienced user of CorelDraw 8, therefore I can appreciate the information found in this Official users guide. I find it to be very informative and simple to follow. It is obvious that the author is very knowlegeable with this program and he is extremely capable of explaining the many features of this remarkable program. I am having loads of fun learning this program and one of the main reasons is this book. So much to learn.....

I'm currently working through this book, and I am finding so many mistakes in this book, it's appalling. Spelling, punctutation, incorrect menus, incorrect directions. It's becoming quite frustrating. Sure, it's written in a conversational style, but that's quite annoying sometimes. The author spends more time trying to make smart remarks about the subjects than actually explaining them.

Corel Photo-Paint 8: The Official Guide

This is a pretty good book, designed primarily for inexperienced users. It's written in an informal, easy to read style. And if you go through the book and do all the examples, you will find yourself quite comfortable with the tools in Photo-Paint. It would also be useful as a general reference text. The author says he is not an artist, but I thought his creations were artistic and they are certainly effective. There are a few unfortunate slips in the hands-on examples, things that wouldn't work because of step which had been omitted or incorrect locations for menu items, but I was always able to figure out how to correct them. Like most rather complex programs, practice is the only way to become proficient. After completing the book I came to the conclusion that Photo-Paint is a wonderful program and that the book was worth the money.

This book is a progressive stepped approach to using Corel Paint 8. It has "hands on" exercises that demonstrates the correct use of the different tools and allows users to see the results as you read and learn the functions of the program. I highly recommend this to anyone desiring to improve their knowledge and competency, particularly those who have little or limited knowledge of the paint programs.

Tech manuals have become very expensive. Used book are a fraction of the cost of new ones. A great way to save money

When I first received this book, I was able to start with hands on training...thanks to the detailed explanations in each chapter. This was the first actual reference to using Photo Paint that I have seen, and so far it's been the only one. Huss has done a super job presenting the projects and explanations of how to use the tools in Photo Paint, shortcuts, as well as amazing masking techniques that will encourage you to want to experiment more on your own with the tools. I've learned how to improve my photo editing and also how to make a 1 dimensional object appear to be 3 dimensional from this book. I can honestly say that this was a great investment, and I highly recommend it to anyone who truly desires to improve their artistic techniques using Photo Paint.

I cannot review something I never recieved...AND I can't get my money back......Will never shop here again...

This book is very good for beginers to Corel Photo-Paint 9 . The writing style of the auther is very amusing and it cover all the thing you need to know and then some more. my only complaint is that the auther could add some pictures of the buttons he is talking about because sometimes it takes a while to understand to whice button he refers.

As with any complex application, the power lies in the unique knowledge of what can be done and how. Fortunately, this book manages to recognize the line between enlightenment and obfuscation, remaining clearly on the side of helpful information.

From it's introduction to it's indepth techniques, Corel PP-9 remains both a tutorial and a reference. If you need unlimited image processing skill, this is a great place to start.

Great book to keep young minds and hands busy using stuff you probably already have in the house.

Great science projects. We made the hover craft and had hover craft races with my sons 4th grade class. The kids learned about science and had a wonderful time. This is my sons favorite book....and mine too.

We love these Kid Concoction books. They keep the kids happy for hours making things with everyday household items. This one is especially nice. It has a lot of very unique ideas. This is a great buy for those rainy days.

I own several of the kid concoctions books; a few of the contraptions/concoctions we've tried didn't work. My daughter, who teaches school also tried them, she said some worked okay, but others didn't work at all. She also said they look good on paper, they seems like they'll work, but don't. One example the balloon hovercraft didn't work, we even tried several different sizes of balloons.

The best book in the series, teens will use the science projects like the hover craft and hydro jet boat for science class. Younger kids will love the special effects and gooey stuff.

I found this book by accident, started to read it and left without buying it. I was overjoyed at finding a copy on Amazon. This book is loaded with great information, instruction and exercises. I highly recommend getting the book and practicing the exercises, you will learn more that way. I can see why he would be a good teacher. This is no "rip-off" of any other book, especially "...Right Side of the Brain." Completely different approaches to a very sometimes difficult medium! I don't think you can go wrong with this book.

Carl Purcell is not only a talented artist but most practically, for everyone who picks up this book, a clear and gifted teacher!

I've read and studied many books of this genre but THIS ONE is my favorite....

Every page is a LOADED tip sheet of instructions in concise short and to the point lessons.

TWO BRAINS you see... one is your friend/one your enemy (if you are an artist!)

In a room full of painters you can see who is using which brain!

Identify the enemy and watch your work take off....

I AM GRATEFUL to find the book that makes my work satisfying and new.

Just sorry I did not find this jewel sooner....

...and I've bought a lot of them! There are some similar ideas in this book to the those in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but this book is all watercolor-specific and boiled down to pack in the maximum information. I like Mr. Purcell's style, as well, which is always a bonus. I found that it inspired me to work harder, and few books can do that. I highly recommend it.

This little book is packed with important concepts for artists. The wisdom presented is essential for visual composition, regardless of the specific medium.

The author's treatment of value is especially valuable (pun intended). Color is important, but value is even more important. He explains why and shows how.

My instructor has many books but suggested this one over all for new students. I found it very helpful and suggest it as a good start for learners. I like the colors used and had good results with the various exercises.