Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Paint Shop Pro 7 in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself...in 24 Hours)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I had just finished learning FrontPage 2000 through the use of a wonderful book called "Create FrontPage 2000 Web Pages In A Weekend". I had my web site ready, well, in a weekend and thought now was a good time to create some graphics. I turned, with some anticipation, to "Teach Yourself Paint Shop Pro 7 in 24 Hours". What a disappointment!

I found 3 pretty obvious errors within the first couple of hours. Also, the author assumes that you can read his mind and therefore does not provide adequate explanations during the "Tutorials" (and I use the term loosely). I consider myself a fairly intuitive student, and I was able to get through the book. I've learned how to use the software, not because of this book but in spite of it.

Would I recommend this book? Under two conditions. One, the person using the book has an infinite amount of patience and has a logical mind. Those are the only qualities that will enable you to get through this book. For example, you have to be willing to do some investigation to understand what the author means when he throws a term such as "stroke" color at you without any prior explanation or definition. Two, if there was not a better book out there. And there are two others, "Paint Shop Pro 7 for Dummies" and "The Complete Idiots Guide to Paint Shop Pro 7". So, with these two solid selections available, avoid SAMS "Teach Yourself Paint Shop Proj 7 in 24 Hours". You'll be much happier and much less frustrated.

I was prejudiced against the book due to the very low readers' rate and overwhelming negative reviews at Amazon. But I was in a need of a decent book on PSP 7. I even bought "Idiots Guide" some time ago, but returned it instantly (see my review on it). After that I went to a store and spent some considerable time comparing the books on the software. Finally I decided to buy this book, and I have not regretted the decision. Now I am trying to restore justice.

Yes, the book is far from being perfect. It bears many drawbacks pointed out by other reviewers. But it contains a lot of information on the software, it covers almost any menu, any tool. Yes, there must be better books. But where are they so far? Are they "Idiots Guide", "For Dummies" or "Solutions" (see my review on it)? Not a bit! They all have much less information than "Teach yourself". Just look into and compare some topics. I did this, and I state that this is the best book on PSP 7 so far, and I recommend it to everyone who is serious about learning the program, who wants to have a sort of a printed tutorial on it, and who can not wait until the better books appear.

As a new user to Paint Shop Pro, I was hoping this book would be enlightening. Instead I found it very disappointing and confusing. Perhaps it's biggest drawback is it fails to note important points that you really need to know.

For example, nowhere does the book tell you that when you use the preshapes tool, you need to uncheck "Retain Style" (which is how the software came: with it checked) or the shapes you create won't fill with color. In doing the early exercises in the book, I tried for over two hours to figure out why the shapes wouldn't fill with color. Only after I called the Paint Shop Pro hotline the next day did I get the answer immediately. Although "Retain Style" is a PreShapes tool checkbox option, this isn't even listed in the book's index.

Here's another example: in chapter 4, it discusses how you work with selections to expand or contract them. It advises you to choose "Selection, Modify, Expand or Contract" but fails to tell you how to get to those options. I know how to activate the selection tool, but I'll be damned if the tool options box lists those options on my screen. Where they are is anyone's guess, and the author certainly isn't shedding any light on how to find them. So, why buy the book?

Frankly, I found this book hurt more than it helped me. Based on its potential for confusion and its ommission of useful information, the title should be Teach Yourself Paint Shop Pro 7 in 24 Days, (not 24 hours). Even though I got the book pretty cheap, it was an almost total waste of money.

If you want to spend your time figuring out difficult puzzles, do the NY Times Crossword rather than try to figure out this software from this book. If you want to learn Paint Shop Pro 7, I suggest you find another book than this one.

This book has so many errors, it makes me wonder if the folks at Sams publishing has any proofreaders on their staff. On the back of the book there is a mention of how to remove red-eye. Is there any tutorial in the book on how to do this? No. On page 46 there is an example of the "New File" dialog box. The example says to see diagram 3.1. Diagram 3.1 shows a picture of Sun Microsystem's web-site. Funny, I don't go to Sun's web-site when I open a new file in PSP. Add to these errors some misspelled words, vague references, and poor examples and you have a book that is not worth your money.

Considering the power of PSP7 and the excellent techniques that are demonstrated in the tutorials on the various JASC linked Web sites, I was very disappointed at the quality of the techniques presented in this book. I found the tutorials themselves were difficult to follow. In fairness, I had only completed about 9 of the 24 'hours' before I gave up and looked for a diffeerent book.

I wanted the book to teach me the easy way to edit digital photographs. Photo retouching, even with PSP 7's auto tools, isn't easy when working with bad pictures. This book is centered more around web graphics, perhaps 3/4s of the book. All of the pictures are in grayscale and there is no CD containing examples for you to work with.

If you are new to PSP this book may be adequate. If you are looking for definitive information about the outstanding new features of version 7, look elsewhere. PSP's newest features are either glossed over or completely omitted. It seems that, in this case, the sofware program exceeds the "Teach yourself ----- in 24 hours" format.

This is my first time with Paint Shop Pro and I found Sams Teach Yourself Paint Shop Pro in 24 hours was very hard to follow. More illustrations are needed so the reader can more fully understand how to use the Paint Shop Pro program. Some things just are not clear per his instructions.

I found this book on the bargain rack for half it's cover price...It still wasn't worth it. During the step-by-step the author skips steps. When he says to click an option, it isn't there. He may be referring to the bar menu choices, the right-click choices or PSPs "exploding window" choices, but you are not going to know. Anybody want to buy a slightly-used PSP book?...You can't have mine - I threw it in the trash.

I have used Sams Teach Yourself series (5 books) and have been satisfied for the most part. This book however leaves ALOT to be desired!! I might just be me...but as a reader I expect to be reminded where items are as I go through the book. This book explains what the buttons are in the first chapter...by the time I get to chapter 3 or 4 I have forgotten most of the 20+ buttons and options described in Chapter 1. Every chapter after gives the name of the button, but not an illustration of it. Also the author leaves you guessing about buttons and menu items since he does not mention which is which. Sorry, but this one can't cut it...I'm returning it to BNB and getting Paint Shop Pro Web Graphics (Because of High Rating Here) to see if better written and explained.