AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Fractal Design Painter 5 Complete by Karen Sperling, Winston Steward ISBN: 155828558X Publisher: Hungry Minds, Inc Pub. Date: 16 October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 1.75

Rating: 2
Summary: Half hearted effort & a CD that's worse than useless.
Comment: It's not all bad however. I was at least able to use the manual to finally crack (understand) Painter 5. An example of an exeptionally well organised book is "P'shop 4 Artistry" by Haynes & Crumpler. "PS4A" cost about the same but was printed on quality stock & included color illustrations & extremely well thought out explanations. To be fair to "FDP5Complete", the in-many-ways impressive Painter program also has a loooong way to go before it is as well organised & as elegant as Photoshop. However all too often there were critical steps missing in a technique being described & these missing steps had to be discovered by the reader when presumably that was what the writer had been paid to do. The book's use of Black & White photos to demonstrate a color grafix program is pathetic & until I read the other reviews I had wondered if I was some kind of computer illiterate cretin for not being able to get any of the accompanying CD's images to appear as icons let alone open the wretched things. This book sadly is not the only one that doesn't check this otherwise obvious point before they ship. With the help of a friend we eventually managed to get the images out (using several different softwares, but a) the images took up 890Mb & b) they were very pathetic in quality & extremely pathetic in artistic standard. The CD only just barely qualifies as a coffee coaster. Probably because I use coffee cups that don't know any better. Summary: If there aren't better books in the store or you've lost your manual you WILL get a fair bit of value out of the book but it could have been so much better with a little extra effort.

Rating: 2
Summary: 150 pages into the book and CD missing images in tutorial.
Comment: I wish someone would go through these books first to see if all the images and tutorial items are complete with the instructions. I did a "find file" on the very first image I was told to open..in the mosaics tutorial..Guitar.jpg, only to find it is not on the CD. So I go to my collection of photos and get one of my own. Then the next tutorial I have to swap CD's to the Painter CD to use one of the images provided on it. I will never get this learning process underway if I can't find images and have to keep changing CD's. Sorry for the strong critique, but I am 50 yrs. old and don't have a lot of time to fiddle around all day swapping and searching..I am trying to acomplish some learning!

Rating: 1
Summary: Not a good choice for learning painter
Comment: Painter 5 Complete is not a good introduction for the beginner or intermediate user. I have found I learned much more stumbling around in the dark or from the official Painter manual that ships with the program. The tutorials tend to be inaccurate and dont lead to a further understanding of the program. There is nothing "complete" about this book at all. Buy the Painter5 WoW book instead--although more advanced it will get you up to speed much quicker and more enjoyably.