Must be a popular subject: Tips for best books?

[Twisted_and_Tainted]

Hi there, I'm a traditional artist and I want to learn how to use the various programs available to make digital art. There are literally a million books around but I wanted to order a few for Photoshop, Illustrator, ZBrush, and Maya as these seem to be the normal programs professionals use in the field.

I'm greeted on Amazon by hundreds of choices.. any particular ones people have had good experiences with?

I figure why part with money going to school when I can teach myself these programs. Is that a bad decision?

[Amber Alexander]

It really depends on your learning style. I learn best by seeing and doing then reading. I bought a book on Maya and it didn't help me much but taking a class on it was awesome. Especially since a program like that has so many options, its very helpful to have teacher there so if something doesn't work you can get help instantly. However I am self-taught in Photoshop just from trial/error & tutorials.

Start with 1 program tho, don't learn them all at the same time :)

[Twisted_and_Tainted]

Thanks for the advice.

I plan to start with Photoshop as I've seen a lot of people use it in various magazines like ImagineFX and for the drawings here. Seems the standard. I plan to leave Maya alone for now, but have it in mind for sometime in the future.

I have a good capacity to learn by myself (my undergrad was Philosophy and I only had 6 hours worth of lectures a week - everything else was at home/in the library) but don't know how I will do learning computer technology by myself. I can get the programs and fiddle around with them, but essentially, I won't know what I'm doing lol. This is why I want a couple of books at hand to look things up or to point me in the right direction.

Photoshop and Illustrator are definitely the first two I'm going to tackle. Then probably Painter and Zbrush. I just don't exactly know which one I will like best for the concept art I want to do. Argh..