Paint Shop Pro 8 : The Guide to Creating Professional Images

Rating:
Summary: Finally a book not written by pedestrians for beginners
Review: Having heard what an excellent bargin Paint Shop Pro 8 was and having little experience in image editing I purchased Paint Shop Pro 8 and the following books:

Paint Shop Pro 8: The Guide to Creating Professional Images by Robin Nichols

How To Do Everything with Paint Shop Pro 8 by Dave Huss

Paint Shop Pro 8 Zero to Hero by Sally Beachman and Ron Lacey

Paint Shop Pro 8 Power by Lori Davis.

Although none of the books are 100% in coverage of the features in Paint Shop Pro 8 (there are so many) my experience has been that Paint Shop Pro 8 Zero to Hero was a complete waste of my money, written by what seemed 100% complete self taught authors who had zero creative talent and knew very little above surface knowledge that can be found in countless places on the Internet for free.

Dave Huss' book lacked a lot in coverage of from scratch design so probably should have been titled differently but if you are interested in digital photography and editing your photos in Paint Shop Pro 8 this is the book to get because it is evident that he is a professional photographer and is far more knowledgeable than the trial by error macjob surface approach of Beacham and Lacey in the coverage of photography, and also does much better at coverage on digital photography than Robin's book and Lori's book. Dave easily relates his wealth of professional experience to beginners terms, but still delves into the how and whys of each technique he discusses. His book is not good if you want to learn brushes and filters, and that is where Robin's book takes the forefront.

Robin's book is best for those intested in editing existing photos and graphics from scratch using filters and brushes. Robin seems to have a much better grasp of the theory, concepts and principles of graphic design than the other authors especially better than Beacham and Lacey who lack any creative juices of their own as far as I could tell. From Robin's book you not only get the how and whys, but also get a lot of creative ideas and suggested techniques to try out.

Lori's book is a good extension of the Paint Shop Pro 8 manual, but like the Beacham and Lacey book don't expect to discover how to design WOW type graphics or get even to get suggestions on how to do it because these authors do not appear to have the ability necessary to do it themselves. Technically Lori's book is more indepth than Beacham's and Laceys', but she lacks on the digital photography end. Lori does seem to know more about Paint Shop Pro than Beacham and Lacey, so her book is the better pick and certainly worth the purchase for any beginner.

If you have the cash get Dave Huss' book for digital photography interests, Robin's book for filter, brush and the more creative side of graphic design, and get Lori's book for a more technical approach to understanding Paint Shop Pro 8.

Rating:
Summary: good book but not for beginners
Review: If you've never worked with an image-editing software, this is not the best first book to get. If you just got a digital camera and you don't have experience editing digital photos, this might not be your best choice.

I got this book from my local library because it is the only book they have that is specifically written for Paint Shop Pro (PSP) version 8. I had version 7 for almost 2 years and was quite familiar with it. Version 8 has a lot of new features, and many of the old features are re-arranged so they're not where they were in version 7.

This book was helpful, but not completely what I was looking for. This book would be best if you want to work with digital (or scanned) photographs. The author seems to think that's the only thing PSP is good for, editing photos. He tells you lots of things you can do, so if that's what you want to do, and if you already have some experience with image editing software, this is the right book for you.

He doesn't hold your hand and go step-by-step, at least not for every concept he talks about. He sometimes, but not always, shows you where the tool he's talking about is located. He seems to assume the reader brings a certain amount of knowledge with him/her when they pick up the book. But if you've got dark photos, light photos, photos that are out of perspective, or if you want to learn ways to make your images really stand out, this book is very helpful. He also tells you steps to use to take several photos and put them together to make a panorama, and how to make it look like it was taken as one photograph. There are some very neat things you can learn in this book.

But, if you are like me, and your primary interest in PSP is creating images from scratch, for web sites or other publications, for stationary to be used in emails, you're not going to get much out of this book. The author says PSP's picture tube feature is "one of those esoteric tools that's almost impossible to find a proper use for." So if you're one of those people who has a huge collection of tubes, if you go surfing the net to find sites that have tubes that you can download for free, you can see that this author is not on the same page as you are. He does, however, give a step by step lesson in how to make your own picture tube, even if he's not so sure how you'd use it. It was interesting to me that the panorama photo he used, in it's final version, showed a seagull that was not in any of the original photos. I thought it might have been a tube, but he did't say. His chapter on text contains sections on vectors and brushes and doesn't show you step by step how to do many of the effects he illustrates.

So, if you are a digital photographer, you might want to buy this book. If you are a PSP artist, and you want to make your own images for web sites, this book might be of some help to you, but it wasn't written with you in mind.

Rating:
Summary: Lacks depth
Review: Note: This review is from a photographer's point of view.

The book...

After finishing the book, I couldn't help but feel that it was a little shallow. It'd be perfect as an introduction to PSP, but intermediate and advanced users would fare better by navigating through PSP's help system.

Some of the advice the author gives regarding settings are off. For example, try using the unsharp mask at 5-10 pixels/100-200%/20 tolerance and you're definitely going create halos around your photos. The descriptions of commands and settings are really very general, and seems to be more like a glorified brochure.

Conclusion...

Buy this book if you're just starting out with photoediting. It does a good job of introducing you to the photoediting tools in PSP, and then some.

I've yet to find any good books targeting photoeditors using PSP. I'd suggest that intermediate/advance users turn to the abundance of web sites dedicated to digital photography to learn about photoediting. Most Photoshop commands have an equivalent in PSP, so both web sites and books dedicated to Photoshop can be applied to PSP.

Good luck, and good light.