This book is suitable for anyone who wants to produce art on a computer - whether you want to create the simplest of doodles or highly finished artwork. The only qualification needed is that you don’t know how to do it yet.
    Drawing and painting on a computer is a huge liberation.
    Using a paintbrush on a computer is, I think, actually easier than using the real thing. Just for starters, it’s much less messy, and you don’t have to clean up afterwards.
    In many ways it’s more intimidating to be confronted with a large sheet of white paper and a simple pencil than with a computer screen, because you can ruin the artwork on a sheet of paper with one careless slip - something that can never happen on a computer. And when it comes to using colours there’s no contest: on a computer you can choose any one of millions of colours in seconds, and then change them to any other colour if you don’t like the results - even after you’ve applied them.
    On a computer you can simply keep changing just about everything until you get your artwork right: there’s never a final moment of commitment with a computer image.
    The learning curve for mastering the art of drawing or painting on computers may seem steep to the newcomer, but that’s partly because of being confronted with the whole range of incredible possibilities all at once.
    Taken one step at a time it’s not so bad.
    After all, creating traditional art isn’t exactly easy itself. Doing even a basic watercolour painting is no simple task - water’s a very tricky medium to work with because it’s so wet.

    This book is about how to use one particular programme, Photoshop Elements, as an image creation tool on your computer. But why use this specific programme rather than any of the alternatives?
    Photoshop Elements is best known for its use in manipulating and editing photographs, but it’s also capable of creating images in their own right, using its powerful array of painting tools.
    It’s almost like getting two programmes for the price of one, and all at a very reasonable price.
    What’s more, because Elements is a slimmed down form of the professional grade Photoshop, which is the standard software of the creative industry, it’s the perfect ‘try out’ programme to use if you’re considering becoming part of that industry.