Mahesh Chand
1 The only GDI+ book you'll need
Let me start by saying this book does not attempt to be something it is not. It's not a generic book on Windows or ASP.NET programming. It deals specifically with one topic. Having said that, GDI+ is a broader topic than you might think and this book does a terrific job of breaking the information up into relevant subtopics.
The material is presented in an interesting, conversational tone that uses REAL WORLD EXAMPLES. You actually build several small GDI+ applications by the time you finish the book.
I'm an MCSD.NET and MCT, and I give presentations on GDI+ to user groups and recently at MSDN Code Camps. This is the book I give away to people in my presentations. If you've ever been stuck on GDI+ and found the MSDN documentation lacking, this is the book for you.
It's worth mentioning that all of the examples are in C# (the author is also a C# guru, so I wasn't surprised), but considering most of the code is method calls, there's nothing here that a competent VB.NET programmer couldn't convert on the fly. Don't let that be a reason to discourage you from buying this excellent book.
Mahesh Chand has done a terrific job, and should give his editor a raise. The book is very well laid out and organized. I refer to it often.
2 Good Samples, Easy to Understand
This book perhaps is the easiest to read and understand. Kind of step-by-step tutorials. Each chapter is followed by a useful sample. Some useful and interesting stuff on Web development using GDI+ and printing. Chapters are organized very well. I would add more complex samples. Rest is pretty straight forward. Overall an interesting reading. If you are trying to understand GDI+ classes, not bad at all.
3 Disappointed
This book is completely worthless. You can read the .NET Documentation and get the same information. A matter a fact most of it is that same as the .NET documentation. Don't waste your money on this one especially if you have some background in graphics programming for Windows.
4 Good for what it covers
This book is all about GDI+ drawing, which is basically every thing defined in the System.Drawing namespace. I didn't expect information on Printing and building interactive GUI applications, which was kind of neat. Definitely some interesting and useful stuff and ton of sample code.
5 Graphics Programming with GDI+
Simply the best...
This book is the best practicle guide a developer can have with him if he needs to work with GDI+. The most refreshing part of the book is the examples that are part of the book.
For a developer like me who has to work under narrow deadlines, this book helped me do the stuff with less time spent looking and researching for stuff.
I am not so much of a MSDN reader, quite frankly MSDN gets me confused, and GDI+ is a subject that needs a structured approach to it. hence, msdn only provides much more info than required hence creating confusion.
I would recomend this to every developer who wants to play with GDI+.
6 Straight to the point
There are not too many books dedicated to GDI+ and Graphics Programming in .NET but this book is definitely one of the finest technical books written on GDI+. As such I am a big fan of AW's .NET Series managed by Don Box and group because of the quality of contents and experts involved in the series.
This book delivers what is promises. Author's writing style is pretty straight forward, which I liked the most. Author talks to the point. As a beginner, you will get it right away.
There are some chpaters such as performance and best practices, Advanced Imaging, Advanced 2D, Transformation and Printing where advanced users will definitely learn what is not discussed in MSDN documentation or in any other books.
All explainations are followed by a sample code, which is pretty nice to have. Just read and run the code. All samples in the book are a seperate project so that's kinda cool.
If you are involve with writing drawing, printing, painting, and UI applications for Windows Forms or Web, you may want to try this one.
7 Kudos ..
I've to start with saying "great work" to the author who has compiled a great book with many real world code samples. I've been looking for a book on graphics programming which discusses the basics of drawing process in .NET and this is where I found full satisfaction.
Briefly, Mr. Chand starts the book with introduction of GDI+ for a beginner as well as from a GDI developer's perspective. Chapter 2 definitely is the smartest and cleanest chapter. Its a tutorial with explaining how the whole drawing and rendering process works with flow charts and images.
Later chapters just get better and better. Chapter 3 is all about the Graphics class, its members, and how to use the in applications.
Chapter 4, 5, & 6 are dedicated to brushes and pens, colors, font, text, rectangles and regions. Its unbelivable how author has discussed every little detail about these objects. How about 45 pages on just pens & brushes?
Chapter 7 and 8 are dedicated to Imaging and Advanced Imaging (over 100 pages). Again every little details are covered.
I personally found Chapter 9 the most useful. This chapter discusses advanced drawing and some of the topics are detailed discussions about containers, line caps and styles, graphics paths, metadata of images, blending - alpha blending and color blending and so on.
Chapter 10 is all about transformations. Transformation of font, text, images, paths, and even color. Wonderful.
Printing perhaps does not belong to this book but its again one of the great chapters in this book. Over 100 pages dedicated to printing and you will find every single object followed by sample code.
I havn't used next chapters - which are DEVELOPING WEB APPLICATIONS using GDI+, Best Practices, GDI Interop, and Exceptions but I am not these are some bonus to the reader.
OVERALL, a PERFECT BOOK you need to learn any thing defined in System.Drawing and other drawing namespaces.
All chapters are follwed by a real world practical example such as writing your own PaintBrush, TextEditor, Image Viewer, Printer Dialog and so on.
Try it and you will find yourself very satisfied. I sure did.
Cheers!
Monica
8 Perfect Reference Book
Definitely one of the books you want in your shelf. I usually use it as a reference book. This book is full with sample code which MSDN is missing. Author also goes in the depth of many topics with interesting and fun samples.
Many topics are covered in details. Full chapters on Fonts and Colors, rectangles and regions, two chapters on images tells you that author has done enough research on GDI+. In other books I usually found couple of pages on these topics.
I admire the Printing chapter. Almost 100 pages chapter. WHOAaa... Every thing about pinting in .NET including customization on printing related dialogs.
Great reference book. Worth spending your money. Well recommended.
9 Most comprehensive and Practical book I have seen
This is the most comprehensive and practical book I have seen on GDI+. What I found interesting is, author finishes every chapter of the book with a real world practical example which you can use in your daily life programming. I usually don't see this kind of book. By using this book, I learnt how to write graphics application such Text editors, painting applications, image viewser, animator, designers and so on. For a programmer, this book serves very good purpose because it is full with so many samples.
I also found Best Practices and Performance chapter pretty interesting. You dont see this kind of chapter in any other book. Again, this chapter has practical code samples.
I will have to give it a go.
Cheers!
Jacob, New England
10 Needs a lot of improvement.
This book needs a lot of improvement. Go for another book.
11 Just OK
This book has a really promising title and table of content, but once you start going deeper you'll see just a repetition of information from .net documentation.
There are many tables listing some properties or enumerations with exact wording from .net docs. In some instances author tries to explain more below, but ends up rephrasing the same thing.
There are few good things about the book. Lots of code examples (too bad you have to download it and no CD with book). Some chapters include useful more detailed information, but it's hard to find it within the ".net docs copied" content.
12 NOT MUCH DEPTH ON GDI+
I AGREE WITH THE READER FORM NEW YORK; READ PETZOLD'S BOOKS (EITHER VB OR C#) AND YOU WILL GET AS MUCH OR MORE ON GRAPHICS THAN THIS BOOK WILL GIVE YOU.
13 Very, very disappointed
I was very disappointed with this book. I needed a book to help me make the jump from GDI to GDI+ and this was most certainly not that book. This was little more than a rehashing of the .NET framework library help file as far as far as I could tell, with all its limitations. It offers little or no additional value.
There were no useful discussions of the underlying abstract coordinate system of GDI+. Oh sure there was a rudimentary discussion of the Cartesian coordinate system, but no real discussion of how the vector shapes you draw in GDI+ get rendered on pixels, and how this can lead to all sorts of frustrating "off by one pixel" issues.
There was no dicussion about why DrawRectangle and FillRectangle seem to draw rectangles of different sizes. In fact, the caption in one drawing in the book makes me think the author has no idea this issue even exists.
There are no explanation of the subtle issues surrounding metafiles (like why do I still need a hDC, since hDCs are no longer used in GDI+) and on and on the list goes.
I can browse through the list of methods and properties in the .NET framework just fine, thanks. What I really need is a book that talks about the subtle issues of GDI+.
My recommendation to you? Buy one of Petzold's new .NET books. They aren't specific to GDI+, but there's a heck of lot better information in the sections he devotes to GDI+ than there is in this lousy book.
14 A very splendid book to have in one's collection
The way the book is been organised is awesome. The book caters the need of both the beginners as well as experienced programmers. It helped me a lot to get into depth of GDI+.
15 Best For Beginners
i was beginner for graphics programming, so i was confused about
the book, so i have seached for book then i have got " Graphics Programming with GDI+" by Mahesh Chand. it's a Nice book for beginners and for masters also, Language is too cool.
Thanks Mahesh Chand......
16 Amazing Book of GDI+ By Mahesh Chand
If i say that this book is good, then its wrong because it is excellent for GDI+.
This book includes all things about GDI+. The way of explaining is totally amazing like first author explains What is GDI+", Its very benificial for beginners who want to learn more about GDI+. Next author explains the defferences between GDI+ and
GDI. Now the topics - Graphics Class, Working with Brushes and Pens, Colors Fonts and Text, Rectangles and Regions and working with Images are the basics for the beginners. Intermediate user can see their valuable topics like - Advance Imaging, Advance 2D Graphics, Transformations and Printing. Advance users can enhance thier knowledge with the topics - Developing GDI+ Web Applications, GDI+ Best Practice, GDI Interoperability and Miscellaneous GDI+ Examples.
Also some featured topics are -
Optimization of drawing quality
Interactive color blending
Printing a .NET
Viewing and manipulating images
FAQs for GDI+
definetly improves the knowledge and interest about GDI+.
Graphics Programming in GDI+ gives some special treatment for effective programming in GDI+ in .NET Framework.
At last really its amazing...
17 Excellent Book for GDI+
I was begineer for graphics programming.I wanted to use GDI+ in my application but i did not know the right way to use it then after i searched for document and technical articles on "GDI+ in .NET" and i got this book.I read this book and found the right way.It covers everything: rendering, Advance Imaging, Advance 2D Graphics, Transformations and Printing, GDI for the Web, and Custom Controls. Well-written, good explanations, and source for both C# and VB.Net.I am thankful to Mr.Mahesh Chand who wrote this book and explained every thing in very organized way.
18 Totally cool
I'm really impressed with Addison-Wesley's .NET Development series and they have some great authors on their roster - Mahesh Chand is definitely one of them. There are many GDI+ books out there, most of them are quite good. As a matter of fact, I've really liked every one that I've come across. However, Mahesh has a really cool perspective and gets right to the point. He doesn't just tell you what to do, he tells you why to do it. I know, this annoys the 'pragmatists' out there, but trust me, no matter how much you don't like theory and only want examples, you'll like this book. GDI+ is a pretty specific topic, but there are a ton of great examples here and I couldn't recommend this book more. The fact that he runs www.c-sharpcorner.com only made me want to buy his stuff more.
Great Job!
19 A fantastic work - a MUST HAVE for any ASP.NET developer
That huge surge you just felt was a collective breath of relief and gratitude being exhaled by the members of the ASP.NET community with the release of "Graphics Programming with GDI+". To date, the topic of graphics programming in ASP.NET exists only in a few sparse articles, which exhibit extreme polarity - they're either too easy or too hard, exhibiting not enough practical information or excessive amounts of practices rarely used, respectively.
Thankfully, author Mahash Chand starts off easy with the fundamentals of graphics programming in the .NET world in a very platform-agnostic manner, and then introduces some fairly advanced concepts. The pace is natural and easy, introducing the requirements and fundamentals for programmatic graphics development in applications, and then developing upon concepts like shapes, fills, and fonts.
He also tempers his discussion with a healthy "best practices" section in the latter part of the book that curbs your enthusiasm for developing visual elements to your project, letting you acknowledge the responsibility one must have when working with graphics, in terms of performance and resource consumption.
Too often I've seen books haphazardly try and explain a concept of graphics programming with GDI+ by saying, "check the .NET documentation for more". This is the definitive book out on the market today that will give you the edge in working with graphics.
The book's examples have a natural slant towards Windows Forms applications, but fear not, web warriors - this book is a must have for any ASP.NET developer, as the approach takes you quickly but thoroughly through the rigors of working with dynamic imaging for the browser.
Bravo, Mahesh - we all owe you a debt of gratitude.
20 Excellent. A must-have book
This is an excellent book on graphics programming for GDI+ in C#. It covers everything: rendering, images, image-manipulation, 2D graphics, transformations, printing, GDI for the Web, and Custom Controls. Well-written, good explanations, and source for both C# and VB.Net. Light on animation, but DirectDraw is where you'd go for heavy-duty animation. Use it to make your own controls with your own look-and-feel.
21 Insightful .. Excellent Printing Chapter
I was looking for a good document and technical articles on "Printing in .NET" and picked this book by chance after looking at "Printing" topic. I was amazed with the coverage of Printing Chapter of the book. Author certainly has spend quality time on this book. The Printing chapter has about 80 pages and explains every little details of printing in .NET, which you will never find in MSDN or in other books.
I havn't done much with entire GDI+ (accept printing and text) but this book certainly helped me to answer my questions. I give it a go.
22 Microsoft.NET Consultant: MCSD.NET,MCSE,MCDBA,MCSA
I wrote that review here in amazon after i wrote one in c-sharpcorner.com to say 'thank you Mahesh for your new book' actually this book is very useful and organized in a way that let you get the most of it. not like the other books in the market that just tell you guidlines, Mahesh explain everything in very organized way. That's your book if you want to understand GDI+.
23 Welcome addition to the graphics programmers book-shelf.
There are so few books on GDI+ that when one comes along It's usually worth reading, even more so when they are as high in quality as this title.
Beginning from first principles this book takes the reader through the use of GDI+ in a clear and concise style. The graphics class, structures, drawing objects, methods, properties and procedures are thoroughly explained.
Two dimensional graphics, coordinate systems, image manipulation and their integration into a windows forms application are explained with well written examples In C# code. The book also covers printing using graphics and text with clear explanations of how to set printer and page parameters as well as a section for web programmers that details how to use GDI+ In an ASP+ context.
Whether you're just beginning GDI+ programming or already have experience with windows forms and the graphic system, this book will make a great addition to your bookshelf. Certainly, this book is good enough for it to become the featured title in the GDI+ FAQ.
