[.ca] Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book (ISBN 0321492021)

A Good Introduction.:
The learning method is great. You load the CD-ROM work files onto your Hard Drive and follow the instructions step by step without having to minimize and move a Help window around, as you would be if you were trying to learn as such with the in-program Help files. But as you progress through the lessons you realize how much you're just being handed pre-set-up layers and other work and pushed like a S.P.E.D. kid through the book. Just be fore-warned that this isn't a tell-all, read-once book and in its defense it tells you that in the introduction, which you clearly read after you've bought it. Also be fore-warned that if you are considering ordering this book with a copy of Photoshop, together in the mail, eageerly awaiting their arrival, you are going to be suprised to learn that for registering your product with Adobe, the software, Adobe is going to give you a bonus gift. As of this writing a 40% off cover price of this very book is one of those gift options. A month free subscripton to lyndia.com, a video tutorial site Adobe worked with excluisely , is also offered as a gift option, as well as a 24hr pass to lyndia.com on the CD-ROM with this book. (Thought you'd like to know if you were planning on pre-ordering that too.)

Buyer Beware.:
I recently attended a two-day course on Adobe Photoshop CS3 as part of my conversion to digital photography and digital imaging. At the end of that course the students were all given a copy of this book which contains a training CD Rom. As I was already booked onto the "advanced course" in 14 days time, I eagerly put the CD into my computer to practise what I had learned. Only then did I discover the CD would not work without my having first purchased and installed the full Adobe Photoshop CS3 software. In my case, I had already ordered that software so it was only a matter of a few days delay before I could get started. Just be warned that you cannot use this product without having first installed the full software package - and that is a separate purchase altogether. Once that's done, it's actually great. Anyone who starts at page one - with no previous experience and no knowledge of the difference between a tool bar and a menu bar, will find it all fit slowly into place as the book teaches one step at a time and then builds on each step until you find yourself automatically going back to something already learned as though you have been doing it for years. My only criticism of the book is some pretty silly typing errors. In one example you are referred back to a previous page only to find they got the page number wrong. In another, a list of tools is incorrect. I did find such basic errors to be quite surprising (and very annoying at the time) from a team of people who are otherwise so technically competent. NM