Corel Painter X is the latest release of Corel's advanced digital art studio software. Painter X for Photographers is a book that is uniquely written specifically for photographers. This book is aimed at those who are new to digital imaging as well as those who are familiar with Painter X and it is most specifically geared to photographers of all types.

While other books focus on Painter from an artist's point of view, Painter X for Photographers is the only one to focus on the photographic aspect. The purpose of the book is to give a sound knowledge of the tools which painter provides and of the techniques needed to use them within the realm of photography.

But why use Painter? Well, although photography is about documenting reality, sometimes the interpretation of reality through the choice of lenses, viewpoint, and composition, is just not enough. Corel Painter can take your photo to another dimension altogether. Painter X for Photographers is just under 330 pages in length and breaks out into 15 chapters.

Chapter 1, "Getting Started in Painter," is really divided into two parts. The first is for total beginners and contains simple exercises to guide the user in identifying key areas around the workspace. The second part contains information to help you customize the program for more efficient workflow. Chapter 2, "First Steps in Cloning," describes just what cloning is. Since a major part of this book deals with cloning, it takes on some different meanings than what it means in a program like Photoshop — this is something very important to understand.

Chapter 3, "Choosing Brushes," is at the very heart of the Painter program and with the sheer number of brushes available, choosing the right brush can be important. Each category has two pages devoted to what they are, how they can be used, and some examples. Chapter 4, "Customizing Brushes" shows that even with the wide variety of brushes available, you sometimes still need to be able to customize a brush for your own purposes.

Chapter 5, "Exploring Paper Textures," explores the library of paper textures that are available to you. It is one of the many reasons why Painter is so attractive to many photographers. Chapter 6, "Applying Surface Texture," takes the previous chapter a step further and now explains the use of surface textures to a photograph.