Book/Learning Suggestions for Photoshop

[KathyN]

I recently purchased CS4. I'm an experienced desktop publisher and a quick study on software but new to digital scrapbooking and to Photoshop. What book or other learning source would you recommend for the quickest path up the learning curve?

[digigrandma]

First, Welcome to Designer Digitals!

I strongly recommend the tutorials by Cassie Jones available in the Designer Digitals Store. Here's the link to her products:

Digital Scrapbooking Products at DesignerDigitals

It would be the quickest way to learn Photoshop while at the same time creating scrapbook pages. Each of the tutorials comes with step by step directions plus everything you need (papers and elements by Katie Pertiet) to create a page as you learn.

The tutorials are written for beginners as well as experienced digital scrappers. All of us, no matter how experienced, learn shortcuts and new digital techniques from Cassie's tutorials. I sure wish they had been available when I started using Photoshop. I taught myself by the trial and error method and my first results were amateurish.

[Jen D]

I second that... I learned just about every trick I know from Cassie. They are so easy to navigate through!

[jesshunt]

Yep - I'd have to agree - Cassie is an excellent teacher and the tutorials are very user-friendly

[shellb]

It depends what you're using it for. I was a registered PSuser at Photoshopusers.com which was helpful...however I use PS mainly for digital scrapbooking so I ended up buying Cassie's tutorials which were more "scrapbooking specific". I wished I would have found Cassie's tutorials sooner as with PSusers I learned a lot of photo manipulation which I don't really use.

Also, whenever I teach someone to use photoshop or digital scrapbooking I make them buy CJ's "getting started with templates" (as I think it pushes a newbie quicker into the experience) and I just sit there while they do it and answer any questions or help out when needed. The best way to learn is to just jump in and do it

Good luck with your venture.

BTW the best part of the tutorials is that Cassie is always on the forums with answers to any questions.

[MIDA78466]

I third or fourth getting Cassie's Tutorials. They are awesome!

[maureenreynolds]

I personally have never found a book that has been useful with Adobe programs, and I even learned WordPerfect back in the ancient days (early 90s?) of WP 4 from a text. I read manuals well but imho Adobe programs are the least intuitive of all the software programs I have ever learned, which are many.

I'll have to agree with the above posters because I would have saved myself a lot of grief had I know the lessons were here in the beginning. So very many steps are done in ways or found in places that I would NEVER have thought of. I tried with various books and achieved mucho frustration. Fortunately, I arrived on this site about then.

I also rec the video classes on line... Renee Pearson and Cathy Zielske have been the clearest for me, with a lot of zoom in and arrows and circles on the action points. hth