Picture Yourself Learning Corel PaintShop Pro X4

"Picture Yourself" is a beautifully printed, rich- papered book that is a very big help in getting you off the ground. Author Koers grabs you by the hand and you will take baby steps. She often tells you do this or that maneuver she has just explained to you to make certain the directions sunk in. She starts you in by accessing the various menus so you learn where they are and what they do, and how to find them if they disappear. You begin with the building blocks including how to put the help menu right on your canvas so you can read as you tackle the various activities. You will learn about the different image formats, JEPG, PNG, etc., how to make a selection from your photo, how to feather the edges and much more.Koers devotes a lot of space to storing your images, finding them and getting them up on your PSP canvas. However, I would strongly advise anyone new to PaintShop ProX4 to utilize a picture editor such as the free Picasa or ACDSee Photo Manager which isn't free but is the benchmark for an image storage depot . You will save an awful lot of time if your images are all in one place, divided into sub folders at your discretion. You can change the format and do a lot of editing before you send the image to PaintShop Pro.Manipulating photos can be simple as the many quick fixes provided or as complex as you want to go. Smart Carver is a real blast -you can zap anybody or anything that is ruining your picture. It's kind of like the Red Queen yelling "Off with her head!" You will learn how to wrap text around any object as well as brush up on text basics or learn new tricks. You'll employ plugins and digital effects to blow your photos out of the water.I have only begun to work my way through "Picture Yourself" as it is very inclusive. This 400 page instruction book has to be the horse's mouth for PaintShop Pro X4. Highly recommended!

Using digital imaging software requires special skill sets beyond word processing, spreadsheets, and other programs you might have encountered in daily life. There is no way around the steep learning curve you'll encounter. This book does a good job of walking you through the new skills you need. (Example: Learning to select part of an image, a most basic & necessary technique, takes practice & has some tricks to it.) The book has helpful pictures, thoughtful details, and the sequence of presentation is very good (teaches solid fundamentals & builds upon them). I keep it by my computer as a reference and use it frequently. True, it doesn't go into the most advanced techniques, but as a beginner to digital imaging, just learning the basic & intermediate skills is enough for now. An earlier reviewer said the book was too theoretical, but I need that theory to clearly understand the why of what I'm doing. Learning why opens whole vistas of understanding in a way that rote learning does not. Buy this book and expect to spend the next year or two learning a whole 'nother kind of computer skills. I'm enjoying the process.

This book is very good. Not great, but very good. It's well written, nicely printed, has great picture references andillustrations, and covers nearly all of the topics. I say nearly all of the topics because for a bookcovering all of PaintShop Pro X4's features and abilities, the author left out a glaring omission:there's nothing in the book that even mentions HDR, High Dynamic Range.This is one of the features that is new in this version of PSP, and it happens to be one of the hottesttopics in the photography world. It would have been be great to get some more in depth explanation onthis neat feature, and how best utilize PSP X4's HDR features. Too bad!

I have been using Paint Shop Pro for years, completly self taught. With this book I was finally able to figure out how to use the layers everyone is always talking about to do some effects that I have been wanting to do for some time. The program is easy to use for basic editing but to really get into the more advanced editing having the step by step directions enabled me to see how easy it really is to do things like creative recoloring of an image. I have only experimented with two new things so far but look forward to use all the tools available in Paint Shop Pro 4 now that I have directions. I have already recomended to a freind that they purchase this book when getting Paint Shop Pro as they will be able to jump into the editing that much faster.

Corel PSP X4 is a surprisingly powerful photo editing package for the money. Unfortunately, the "user guide" that comes with the software is very weak. I bought this book hoping to get a detail reference manual for the software. I have found that the book is a very solid beginners guide to the software package but lacks much of the depth I was looking for. Many of the "advanced" fuctions are simply not addressed in the book. So, while it was not what I was looking for, I would most certainly recommend it to anyone who is starting out with PSP X4.

It's certainly helped me! I had PaintShop Pro X3(PSPX3), and tried to learn it without any manual. I felt like I wasn't getting the full use of the software program I had purchased. So when I bought Paintshop Pro X4 I decided to spend a little more and buy this manual. It has helped me dive into the deeper uses of this powerful software that i missed out on in PSPX3. I've learned many new ways to manipulate images, add effects, create panoramic pictures, 3-D pictures and especially working with layers. Recommended.

I bought this latest version of PSP (Pro x4) as I now have a little more time to devote to sorting my vast collection of photo's in a more pro manner! I've followed 'help' topics and You-Tube vid's and found most pretty helpful. However, I bought this book so I could start at the beginning and work through it one page at a time and have the ease of picking up where I left off. It's been a real God's send. I have many 'How to' books, some ok, some a waste of money, but this one is a real boon to understanding and using while working through PSP. I can't recommend it highly enough. Very easy to follow, even the more detialed parts. Very well written by someone who obviously knows her stuff and with lots of pictures. Instruction manuals don't get better than this. If you buy just one book on this subject, make it this one. A 5 star publication.

I found this book as about as useful as a Chocolate Tea Pot. It has very few examples of how to create a particular picture or effect. And is for ever referring to other chapters. See this see that. In my opinion a complete waste of money. Your better off just practising on PaintShop. A very dissaponting purchase.

A comprehensive book that is easy to understand to get the basics of PSP. However, it doesn't show how to do things like montages.

good

very good product