The Painter 5 Wow! Book (3rd Edition)

In this good-looking full-color guide, Threinen-Pendarvis brings MetaCreations Painter 5 to life. She presents artwork produced by a variety of contributing artists and explains, step by step, how you can achieve those same effects. Each procedure is outlined on just one, two, or three pages, so you can flip through the book to find interesting effects and jump right into reproducing them.

Despite its concise presentation, the material is well-organized, so you can concentrate on just one area at a time if you wish. The chapters focus on, for example, using Painter's interface, color tools, brushes, selections, masks, floaters, shapes, scripts, and special effects; using Painter with Photoshop; producing animations; creating Web images; and printing. At the end of each chapter, there's a gallery of images from contributing artists along with an explanation of the Painter tools and creative techniques the artists used to produce each image. Because the tasks throughout the book range from basic to advanced, users of any level can gain from the book's many tips and insights. You really learn how to use Painter's tools together to produce eye-catching commercial and fine art. The included hybrid CD-ROM includes brush and painter libraries, animations, scripts, photos, textures, videos, filters, and demo versions of MetaCreations Painter, Detailer, and Expression and of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, and PageMill. --Kathleen Caster