Customer Reviews

Painter 5 F/X

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If I can save you from wasting your hard earned money on this five pound piece of crap then I'll feel a little better. Let this be a lesson to instructors who assign books without having read them first. The publisher should be ashamed and issue refunds. Grossman starts out in her introduction by claiming that her coauthors and she "bring over 150 combined years of life experience to this book..." Too bad some of those years weren't spent in the proof-reading department because this book is riddled with errors, inconsistencies and flat out incomprehensible writing. Trust me when I say "It's not you or the program, it's the book!"

Please don't let this turn you off of Painter because it's a wonderful program and the learning curve is not that steep, but there are some challenging aspects to it. I'll heartily recommend The Painter 5 Wow book by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis for any level user. It is worth every penny and you will find it useful far beyond the initial learning stages. Even now with version 5.5 out, it still is my favorite book on Painter. The cd that comes with the P5WOW book is chock full of extra brushes, scripts and stock photos that really help you have fun with the program while you learn how to use it. By contrast, the Painter FX cd is virtually useless and like the book itself, error- ridden. I feel really sorry for the artists who contributed work to the Painter 5 F/X book because it must be embarrassing to be associated with such a turkey...

I was assigned this book for a class working with Painter 5.0, so far my classmates and I (not mentioning the instructor for whom this was the first time using the book for the class) have given up on it. It is obviously not a book for beginners, However, I would suggest it is not a book for advanced users as well. The main problem I have with it is it's organization of information within its lessons. The lack of hiearchy in it's structure and style make the lessons difficult to follow along. It also presumes prior knowledge. So if you wish to paint on a transparent layer to complete an assignment you better know how to do it because do won't find out how in the book. (At least no one in my class could find it written in the book anywhere).

I'd imagined that I'd receive a book revealing the secrets and magic of Painter 5. The new Painter has a lot of interesting new plug-in brushes but for some reason the author has skipped them all but just one. The title is Painter F/X but no info is given on the F/X brushes and techniques of painter 5. Also, what's more important is that Rhoda Grossman doesn't mention one major drawback of painter plug-in brushes. These brushes are ment for use with very small files, no larger than 5Mb. Seems she really hasn't tried it all out herself!