Customer Reviews

The Painter 7 Wow! Book

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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I'm a part time faculty member at a Boston art school. At the school I teach a class on Digital Illustration using Painter. I myself use the Painter WOW! Book as an instructional tool, and it is actually a required text for the class. If you're at all interested in Painter, reading this book is one of the best things you can do for yourself, it's a must have! Cher's book does not just tell you how you "could" use Painter; she provides real world applications of the tools within Painter to show what you "can" do. Due to the seemingly complex interface, without this book, a new user could potentially be scared away from the application. The Painter WOW! will help you work through the entire application, progressing at your own pace. As for seasoned users, such as myself, you are sure to come away with many new tips and tricks; you'll wonder how you ever worked without them. I started buying the Painter WOW! Books back when version 5 had just been released. WOW! 6 was great, and WOW! 7 is better yet! Not only is this book chalk full of useful information, it's a visual delight. Bravo!

Painter 7 WOW! not only fills in the gaps left by self-study (even after years of using the program) but also inspires and encourages. The featured artwork is fascinating, vibrant and timely. This book has many new pieces not found in Painter 6 WOW!, strong documentation on how to get the most from Painter 7's many new features (new Liquid Ink and Watercolor sections are especially insightful) and up-to-date information. We found this book to be the only one needed to feel proficient and "friendly" with the program - whether the point of view is as a Fine Artist familiar with the materials but not with computers, or as a graphics person unfamiliar with Fine Arts techniques.

This book is wonderful. It is 400 pages, full of beautiful work created by Painter artists, techniques of these artists, tips, etc... The author has managed to provide a huge wealth of information on a software title that is loaded with possibilities. Although one can use the preset brushes and paper, etc. within Painter itself, the author decribes techniques, step-by-step how-tos and tips, etc. that put everything together for you... As a beginner with Painter, this book is a MUST. I can not stress that more. I will bet that unless you are completely familiar and know every in-and-out of Painter, you will gain something out of this book. As a beginner with Painter, just looking at the interface is intimidating. After playing around with it and reviewing the manual, I gained some understanding... but found it difficult to apply real-world techniques to really get the effects I wanted to achieve until I read through this book. Lastly, I would like to stress again that the book is beautiful and very inspirational!!

AWESOME!

I won't add much more to the previous reviews except to say "me too". The manual that comes with the program is very terse and often doesn't go into much detail on how to achieve a particular effect. The Wow! Book, on the other hand, is carefully organized to explore the software section by section, with LOTS of illustrations to us instruction-challenged people. You can use this book instead of the manual, IMO. And Painter is a superb program, it's nice to see it has a superb 3rd party book to support it.

When I saw a recent review that said the book has only one portrait technique, I just had to point out that it has lots more than that! A quick search turned up "Sketching with Pencils" (OK, the subject is feline rather than human, but still it's a portrait, p. 64), "Drawing with Colored Pencils" (starting from a sketch, p.65), "Gouache and Opaque Watermedia" (also starting from a sketch, p. 84), "Sculpting a Portrait" (using Chalk variants, p. 88), "Oil Painting on Layers" (as the reviewer noted, p. 180), and "Cloning a Portrait" (turning a photo into a painting, p. 215). Wouldn't it be great indeed to have more detailed explanations of the pieces in the "Gallery" sections? But I'm afraid that would make the book too heavy to lift! The step-by-step detail in the techniques is great, and the "Galleries" are there to inspire us.

Great book overall for beginners and advance users. This book contains many great techniques that can expand digital artist knowledge of traditional art. In order for you to do the lessons though, I highly recommend a Wacom tablet. Painter w/ a mouse isn't a fun experience. I really like the lessons on the chalk pastels and watercolor. For people who have the other versions of this book, I wouldn't know what to say since this is my first book on Painter.

This book is a great asset in helping one understand and navigate the complex palettes that come with Painter 7. It really helps the artist fine tune and accomplish the desired effects for specific examples. It also discusses the various ways in which to start a painting, either from a photo, a sketch or from scratch. My only disappointment would come from the lack of details on how to achieve the truly great effects seen in the gallery images. I think this book is a wonderful tool for graphic designers like myself. But it really skims the surface on creating great works of art. I think a lot of people who buy painter would love to be able to produce portraits and paintings of their favorite photographs. This book only has one tutorial on portraits and it is oil based. It also spent a lot of time on effects for type, animation and web based graphics. Doesn't Adobe and Macromedia already have these areas well covered. I bought Painter because I want to paint.