Category: Home

Announcement: Who are You?

You are an ‘experienced beginner’ or intermediate user of Poser or Vue. You have at least some basic understanding of image handling software like Photoshop, GIMP or alike. It’s installed, runs without serious errors, you’ve got some results out in print or on your website or to a web gallery. You may have read some parts of the user manual, done some tutorials and visited some forums.

Now you want to improve yourself, enhance the quality of your results and the efficiency and effectiveness of your way of working. But where to start? The manuals follow the software menu structure instead of your workflow. The forums just answer loose issues, after numerous posts and quarrels, if at all. Tutorials are interesting, but concentrate on isolated subjects.

Then my Missing Manuals series might be of help. You’re welcome.

My articles however do not address the basic versions like Poser Debut, Vue Frontier, Photoshop Elements etcetera as these are missing so many features compared to the regular and pro ones. And I do not cover the real pro topics either, like Vue Infinite / xStream, ZBrush or advanced video editing.

You are a dedicated hobbyist, or at most a freelance artist discovering new tools. A bit like me, that is.

Sticky: What are the Missing Manuals?

In my quest to understand a piece of software, I’ve got to work with Manuals and Tutorials. They do provide some help, but for me they’re not really working out.

Manuals tend to follow the menu structure and screen layout. But they hardly tell me when to use a specific function, and in which case what parameter settings are preferred. The menu structure never is the structure of my workflow. Manuals might help with the work but hardly contribute to the flow.

Tutorials tend to direct me to a specific result, and tell me which buttons to push and which parameters to set. But only in rare cases they tell me why. Tutorials might help with the flow, but hardly contribute to my next piece of work.

I do hope my Missing Manuals are different, and add to both the regular Manuals and Tutorials. I try to present a deeper understanding, to present the “why”. This way, they might contribute to your work and flow as they do to mine.

In order to get where I want, every chapter is an answer to the question raised in the chapters title. Hence, a ‘chapter’, an ‘article’ or a ‘question’ usually are similar pieces of the Missing Manuals. My intention is to present each piece in web-format, as PDF, and in video form. Let’s find out how far I can get.

More…

After half a year of presenting just tutorials I decided to restructure my websites. This included the move of my Links Library and and Magz Reviews right into here to bring all informative posts in one place. So, from then on, there is more than just Missing Manuals alone. Enjoy.