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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good start, but light on content, March 27, 2003
I'm a web developer by trade, but I've mostly coded back-end stuff. When I found myself needing to create some minimal imagery for a site, I turned to PaintShop. The price tag compared to PhotoShop was the difference maker and I had heard I could do 90% of what PhotoShop did with PaintShop.I quickly found that I needed some extra help in using the software. Having never before used graphics software I found myself in serious need of help. This book was an excellent introduction, and I was quickly able to accomplish what needed to be done. I had to start from square one. After reading the first couple of chapters, I felt I had a good grasp of questions like what is a layer, how to flatten images, number of colors on the palette, and how to manipulate the tool in basic ways. I'll look at each of the sections of the book in greater detail: Part I Making Great Images -
This section of the book is 83 pages long and covers the fundamentals of how to use PSP. It covered all the nuts and bolts about how to do things like draw a line to rotate and resize your image. It does a pretty good job in this task. Having never used a graphics software package before I totally needed this chapter. More advanced users will probably be able to skip it. Part II Marrying PSP to the Web -
I was a little disappointed in this part of the book. There is a chapter on basic graphic HTML. What really would have been useful would have been some CSS help here. There is a chapter on creating transparent images. Even with little graphics experience, I didn't really get anything out of the book on that topic that wasn't obvious in the tool. There is a chapter on why using small images is good and how to compress and crop. Simple stuff. There is a chapter on coordinating your graphics. Wonderful advice like picking colors that look good together abounds. How to create buttons and spacers and the like is also covered. Finally, there is a chapter on backgrounds. This one is actually pretty good if you use backgrounds in your design, but they usually look tacky to me. Part III Accelerating Your Images -
This is the meat and potatoes of the book. Topics like layers, vectors, putting text on a curving line, etc are covered. You have to have some kind of help to figure this stuff out if you haven't used a graphics package before, and this book did a descent job. Although I must say that I used it more to learn how to ask the PSP help the right question more than I used the book to answer it. There simply is not enough detail here for you to get everything. But, you will at least have the vocabulary necessary to find an answer in the help, and you usually have some kind of idea what you are going to be doing. Part IV Image Mapping and Slicing -
PSP does have a pretty cool tool that lets you take a big image and slice it up into smaller images and then it puts those images into an HTML table. All you have to do is take the generated HTML and paste it into your site. It's pretty slick and the explanation in the book is adequate. Topics like creating rollover menus and image maps are also covered. (Please resist the temptation to create mystery-meat navigation. The book doesn't warn against it.) There is also quite a bit on animation, but as I have done no animation using PSP, I guess I shouldn't comment. Appendices -
This is a total waste of space and a pad to book size (which is only 311 pages of a lot of pictures). There is actually a list of "Cool Sites." The list of keyboard shortcuts is nice I guess. All in all, this book did a descent job teaching me how to use PSP. From what I've seen, it's the best on the market. Unfortunately, that doesn't say much. This book will certainly get you started, but after a few hours of use, you'll spend more time looking in the PSP help. Three Stars -
HawkeyeGK
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by Lori J. Davis
by T. Michael Clark
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