One of the most interesting image editing and artistic programs to come along is Fractal Design Painter but, amazingly, there have been few companion books available for it. Painter is such a feature rich program few users navigate all of its waters and a thorough companion book has been needed. Painter has rightly become a sensation and, although the manual is well thought out and thorough, I've been vexed by the lack of a definitive "tips & tricks & how to" after market book to show me how to do all the cool stuff I see in magazines done with Painter.
January 8, 1997
To get the most out of Painter you really need a tablet with a pressure sensitive pen and a scanner. It works well with an ordinary mouse but if you spend 5 minutes using Painter with a pressure sensitive pen you'll run right out and buy one. Dazzling Digital Art sets you up as a power pen user and points you in the right direction to be truly politically correct and sensitive to pen pressure.
The next cool tool you need with Painter is filters. The world of filters such as those available from HSC (Kai's Power Tools) and Adobe (Aldus Gallery Effects) comprise a major section of Dazzling Digital Art. All the standard Painter tools, techniques, palettes, brushes, and filters are described, turned inside out and explained from all points of the compass.
There is a fat chapter on cloning and understanding how to best use cloning. My experience is that cloning is really the key to using Painter efficiently. I'm not an artist but I'm involved in graphics production and I try to apply artistic effects to type. Which leads me to my one complaint about Dazzling Digital Art - the text chapter is weak.
When I got Dazzling Digital Art in the mail I thought "Oh, boy, now I can figure out how to do all those swell type effects I see in the artsy-fartsy magazines!" Not so. The chapter on text is a superficial discussion of what type is and how to work with fonts. There is even a discussion of the difference between "fonts" and "typefaces". Few snazzy type effects are discussed. But I guess I shouldn't act like a dog in the manger - this is still a great book.
