Manga Studio 5, Beginner's Guide Paperback – April 24, 2014

The cover is awful, but the innards are an excellent intro to Manga Studio 5.I am primarily a writer, and have long used AutoCAD and Paint Shop Pro for illustrations, but not up to their limits and to this day I remain woefully unfamiliar with Photoshop, etc. I bought Manga Studio with the notion that some of my materials might be more accessible in graphic format. I did not find MS5 particularly intuitive, and was not satisfied with program manual or a 3rd-party manual I bought.Internal design is very similar to the "Dummies" series. It starts from the very beginning. Besides careful step-by-step directions (with screen shots) there are many tips and tricks woven into the text.Greatly appreciated!

Hello, Michael RhodesI am really frustrated now, and do you want to know why, I recently bought your book, manga studio 5, I must tell you to me you know the stuff but you can not pass the message across. And I really have to struggle to understand what you are trying to explain. Meanwhile,I am on page 118 of your book, but it look as if I can not go further,why because the CUT BOARDER TOOL you mentioned in the book is not in the manga studio software, my question is did you check the software before you print this book?. Or do you know a way out of this mess I like to hear from you URGENT PLEASE([email protected])

The author refers to drop down menu buttons that do not exist in my version of Manga Studio 5. Example [page 84 - "click on the New Folder layer Button", I can't find that particular button, nor is it listed in the very sparse index. If you can't perform step 3 in a 5 step task because he uses a term he has not explained, you're stuck and can't proceed. He also refers you to chapters 11, 12 & 13 to explain things in chapters 1,2 & 3, but they are not in the book. You have to download them from the publisher. The publisher's site did not list these files, but an email to customer support was promptly returned with links for files to the missing chapters. I will keep plugging along, but only because I've already spent $35 on this book.

It's decent and reasonably complete. However, it's written in a style that's, in my opinion, rather uninspired and boring. I know the main purpose is to show all the features of the software, but it lacks cohesiveness, and narration necessary to hold my interest for long. There's nothing wrong with the advice. It's just that the text fails to hold my attention. It's not the kind of book that excites you and gives you inspiration to do something. Okay if you just want a guided tour for all the options.

This goes into extreme depth on everything you can do. Like others have said, I wish they would have chosen a better cover as it doesn't truly show all that you can do with the software.The book explains pretty much everything you might need to know about manga studio but if you're a beginner, you'll want a book or two just on drawing manga as this isn't as heavy on the technique and focuses a bit more on the technical side of using manga studio. Overall, it's very useful if you're just picking up the software.

Very good! Lots of good stuff in here, the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is that the author repeatedly refers to digital files which do not appear to be available anywhere. Kind of annoying since a lot of the lessons use these non-existent files.

If you know nothing about Manga Studio 5 this is not the book for you. This will not explain ho to utilize the program for easy things such as ho to do a word balloon with text or how to import other art. There are way too many things this terrible book is missing for it to be a help to anyone needing to learn and use this program. I should have known right away by the hideous and childish artwork on the cover. Wow. If you know your way around Manga 5 then this book can help but it will not teach.

This book was way better than I expected. It explains tools and options that I'm sure we've all seen but ignore because we have no idea what they are and figure we don't need.

I purchased this book specifically because I wanted to learn Manga Studio FIVE. Despite it having 5 in the title its actually written from the perspective of Manga Studio FOUR. I figured this out as I was wading through the chapter on setting up a new brush and the process is following the way that Four did it, whereas five has an entirely different method. I found a video on youtube as it had my head scratching as the button the book asked for wasnt even there and the video by Doug Hills quite clearly showed the step was entirely different!Also the book tells you to save all your work in a folder calls MS4 which is a bit of a dead giveaway that they haven't bothered updating the text in any shape or form just slapped 5 on the cover and reprinted it.Also its so overwritten with a page that starts "If comic books are like TV shows, then graphic novels are movies" and then waffles on for nearly a page of utter inconsequence. Trust me if I'm at the stage of having a graphic tablet and wanting to learn a program I'll probably already know all that stuff already.

Having paid a significant price for the paperback edition of this book, I learned that:- a chapter of the book isn't in the book; it's only available online.- the illustrations were so poorly drawn, texted and printed that they are difficult to see and decipher clearly while using the book for the exercises in the book.- to compensate for their own knowledge of the inadequacy of the illustrations, an inadequacy admitted by the author in the book, the publisher supplements the book with a downloadable PDF file 192 pages big. So in theory I now also have to pay for the paper and ink to print that?- Often the illustrations don't match what I see on the screen when I'm using the book. For example, the Register a New Document button in the book is a texted button but on my screen I discover with frustration and difficulty that the function was served by a small diskette icon.- the instructions are incomplete. The author leads us to making our first New Document and invites us to play. For me nothing happens until I experiment in a state of irritation and finally discover for myself that first I need to add a layer on which to draw.Maybe the author is referring to a version earlier that Manga Studio 5 or maybe his Mac version looks different from my Windows version. If so, Packt Publishing should not take our money without providing for that.I will however concede that I'm enjoying using the book but that's because I am learning about Mange Studio 5 by debugging this book's errors and omissions and I like solving puzzles. Its inadequacies are an entertainment since, being retired, I have time on my hands.Having had the joy of learning from excellent books such as Scott Kelby's series for Photoshop applications, I find myself feeling contemptuous of the relatively amateurish, uncaring, unprofessional quality of this book. I cannot recommend it. It's as if they took my money in breach of contract relative to what they provide in it.

Consigliato sia ai neofiti di Manga Studio 5 sia a chi ne sa di più ma che ha necessità di conoscere meglio un programma così vasto. Questa guida é molto chiara e propone esempi e foto di grande aiuto.

There's no way to get the support files that accompany the exercises in the book. I tried emailing the publisher (www.packtpub.com) but didn't receive a response.

Just what I wanted !