Not buying a book

[laura_seabrook]

One reason I went to Westfields today was to buy a copy of The Painter IX Wow! Book at Borders. I've had a working copy of Painter for a while now, and am keen to explore and use it. In the event, I didn't, and here's why.

Firstly, I have Painter X, which is one version on, and there is a version of the book for X out there somewhere. Secondly, the borders price was $A 75 and I considered that a bit excessive, considering that the uni library has a copy anyway. In fact, as I'll be doing my Masters for 4 years, I'll have plenty of opportunity to bottow that if I need to.

Two things that have been frustrating me have been attempts to use my graphics tablet (which might be solved by getting a different table) and the high learning curve of Painter. The book mentioned above looked really instructive on the ins and outs of Painter. I've decided to use painter to scan and colour my next few web comic pages, so we'll see how that goes. The uni library had a copy of The Photoshop and Painter Artist Tablet Book: Creative Techniques in Digital Painting (golly, these long titles seem like they were written by pamphleteers in the 17th century or something) and borders also had it too, but $73 is a bit much to pay for asuch a thin book.

Anyway, what I actually bought was a book on life in ancient Rome, which only cost $A 25, and felt much happier doing so. The othe $50 can be spent on other things like maybe digital tuners or (gasp) bought software.

Also in the uni library that I borrowed today were Painter IX Creativity: Digital Artists Handbook and Character Design for Graphic Novels. The first looks very interesting, though I suspect I ought to read the "Wow" book first. The second I thought was an Ilex book, as it has a lot of artwork I've seen in Ilex books about web comics and graphic novels in it. Since I'm about to start work on twographic novels, I thought this'd be worth reading.

And the moral of the (non) story is - use your local libraries before spending money - it can be cheaper that way!

Comments

[mundanecircus.livejournal.com]

Where books on Painter are concerned, they are also a very rare breed -- not because of the price, but rather the availability. none of my local Borders stores (didn't even know they had them Down Under) has nothing on Painter, while only one Barnes and Noble store had a book about Painter X for US$35. EBay also has slim pickings for Painter books. Practically, you're most-likely to find books about Gimp than for Painter -- sometimes I wonder if Painter is really as popular as it seems (eBay has LOTS of copies of Painter up for grabs, but good luck looking for books).

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Well it certainly gets a lot of Hype. I was a little disappointed with the interface of Painter X, as it resembled Fireworks MX 2004 which I used (and is at least 4 years old) but that might be ignorance more than anything else. Looking through the WOW book though, I can see wonderful stuff, and that's what I want to do!

Not sure about GIMP. there's tons of tutorials online, though I've never seen a paper book about it. Considering the nature of its development I can understand that. Personally, I don't like GIMP. Technically it's fine for most things, but the interface (at least in windows) seems clunky and counter-intuitive, and it's not obvious how one changes it. Searching for help on line brings up lots of results, but they tend to be a labyrinth of postings on forums by folk who write at a level that makes assumptions about the reader. Not entirely helpful.

It's also hard to find decent books about Paint Shop Pro as well. There are a few about, but they tend to be the JUST THE BASICS sort. I still uses PSP in preference to Photoshop, perhaps because I was using versions of it since 1997, and was given a legal copy of PSP 7 for my birthday a while ago (currently use X, though they're up to X2).

I like PSP, but I may have to use Photoshop to make those two graphic novels.