&Adobe: The Official Training Workbook from Adobe (Classroom in a Book)

BOOK USED AS GUIDE FOR LEARNING BASIC TUTORIALS

I bought this book having previously bought and worked my way through the companion volume on Lightroom which was good. The first thing that struck me was that the overall print quality of this one was nearly as good as the lightroom one and not what I would expect from a book with a retail price of nearly £50. The next criticism is the book tries to cover an extremely large complex program in the same sized book as the one covering the simpler Lightroom program so it can't cover the topics in the same depth. The book needed to be longer to be effective, I fear this may have been a case to publishing to a price rather than the users need.Personally I don't find the writing style of this book as effective as the Lightroom one at explaining the working of the program, if this is a reflection on the different authors of the rather shallow approach they have been forced to take I am not sure.

I've read two others in the Adobe Classroom in a Book series - InDesign and Illustrator. Both were good, and with practice you could do effective work, with further learning you could do professional work. I would give both of those 4 stars.This book - the Photoshop version - is too basic to provide you with a basis to learn on your own. It does not cover enough material. The material that is covered is done at too shallow a level to be effective.The book is expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as the time you would waste choosing this over better resources.

Perfect way to learn Photoshop. You get the images used in the book by registering your copy with the publisher. Then work through each lesson at your own pace and as often as you want. In my opinion WAY better than YouTube videos as this is a big and complex subject.

OK, so it's the "official" training book, but it's boring, badly indexed, badly ordered and above all else, very biased.You are far better off choosing from the hundreds of free training videos on YouTube from experienced users. Search for the thing you want to do (e.g. "select and enhance one colour") and try the ones that come up. Most are easy to follow, dynamic, and honest about what can can and cannot be achieved.

Enjoyed it.