Customer Reviews

Painter IX for Photographers: Creating Painterly Images Step by Step

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Purchased a few weeks ago and set it aside as I've been heavily involved in work projects. Picked it up a few days ago and realized I had misplaced the CD which comes with the book. I e-mailed Martin, the author and the same day he responds saying he will send me a new CD. Unbelievable service! In the meantime, I apply the tutorial in chapter 2 to a picture of my house(instead of the castle which is on the CD) and the results are so amazing we are going to order an enlarged print to hang in the den. This is not like those photoshop books that you have to painfully slog through. You will be able to make great pictures almost immediately.

I first purchased Painter Ver 6 and discovered that no matter what book I purchased, I still had to be an artist to use the program. When I saw Martin Addison's book I figured I would try again with Painter IX. This book is actually for photographers! The book deals mainly with cloning techniques. His instructions are easy to follow. The images in the book are great and all are in color. If you use PhotoShop, this book is for you. This book should be required reading for anyone that is going to write a training manual. Addison shows how to do it!

Although I have been using Photoshop for years, I'm new to Painter. In fact, I purchased Addison's book to decide, if I wanted to buy Painter IX.5. The photos in his book are outstanding, because they give you an instant comparison when using different papers and paint brush styles and sizes. As a beginner, I also appreciated the step by step cookbook style to accomplish a task in some of the chapters. Once I learn Painter, the cookbook section will be a good quick reference to obtain an effect. Normally, I would not have written a review, but I had a question, sent the author an email, and he answered the question. Now, that's extra value!

Painter has long confused me. I'm not an "artist", just a photography hobbyist interested in new ways of expression. Painter always seemed just too tough, too steep a learning curve for the casual user.

This book makes Painter to easy to understand and use for the photographer. The book is useful to users of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro.

Addision moves at a comfortable pace, exploring one tool after another. His projects and exercises are not demanding, but are very instructive. Many examples are provided on the accompanying CD-ROM.

Overall, this is a great way for any photographer wanting to expand their capabilities to learn Painter. I wish there more books like this for other difficult to master programs. I recommend it highly.

Jerry

I have been using Painter since version 6 and have many books on the application.

My interest is in photography and post processing images in an "artistic" fashion. The book has helped me enormously to make the most of Painter from a photographer's perspective.

This book is the one that is always by my side when working in Painter IX. I particularly like the Chapter 5 portion on the brushes. For me, this chapter alone made the book well worth its purchase. It's great having a single resource, which shows the many brush variant and examples of what they can produce.

if using Painter IX on your photography is what you seek to do ,this is THE BOOK .well laid out ,easy to understand ,i learned many things here ,and there are many pictures and examples to help.EXCELLENT book ,everything about it seems well thought out.i learned more from this book then from Painter's own manual.

I was looking for a book that would teach me to paint over photos, giving them not just a painterly look, but a painted look, ala Fay Sirkis, and this book delivers. The examples provided on Amazon and on the book's web site don't to it justice. The tutorials and examples do what good tutorials are supposed to: they provide the foundation, and leave it up to the artist to infuse the work with his or her vision. After having read this book and worked through the examples, if you have a good photo to start with, there's no reason whatsoever that you can't turn out a digital painting in any number of styles.

This book is about cloning images. It is not about building images from scratch. Unlike the Wow's or Creativity books, it does not rehash earlier version tutorials, teach painting or software basics, or expound about the zen of artistic expression and creativity through use of a software package. It is cloning information for use with photographic imagery...one image or multiple images.

The voice of a working photographer, explains cloning techniques using particular brushes and paper to change and enhance photographic materials. This is most appealing to those who already have meaningful, well composed images. This is of value to those who wish to take their images beyond photographic reality.

Nor are his methods "over the top". I did not see one pasty-faced baby, over-exposed bride; or orange-skinned fashion model. I did not see blobbed, gobbed, over-filtered/saturated busy backgrounds. No cartoons here. For the most part, I would describe his treatments as subtle, timeless, classic or elegant --all image dependant.

Like painters, he simplified. Unlike painters, his subjects still held sharp detail; landscapes contained clean leading lines, branches and enough interest to rest the eye upon. With purpose, he uses colour, tone and texture to suggesting time, mood or season.

As a photographer, this book is a welcome addition and will pay me back.

I liked the book. I found it to be what I was looking for. That is to say a book that was easy to follow, yet sophisticated enought to allow me to create the digital painting look, on a particular photograph, that I was wanting. I experienced success on my first attempt at a particular technique in the book and am anxiously looking for more spare time to devote to creating other techniques covered in the book. I love the look of digital painting and found this book an excellent resource to get me started with painting and also the software. This is my first time working with this software. If you want a book that is well written with easy to follow instructions...I think that you may be very pleased, as I was, with this one. I highly recommend it.

Just what I was looking for. Martin did an outstanding job on this book.

Just a note on the painter program itself. Painter is a program that mimics characteristics of various art tools with a wacom tablet. If you (dont) already know how to paint and draw, dont think painter is going to do it for you with (any) how to book. It still takes a lot of knowledge on how the real thing would feel and look before you can make a meaningfull attempt at creating anything other than a smeary looking picture in painter.

Just my 2 cts