Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom

I have just completed this book after purchase for a long time. As I have used Photoshop for a long time, but I never read a book about Photoshop. So I decide to choose this book as my first book to learn photoshop.Well, this book was target to the beginner level of photoshop user. But it tell me a lot of information that I could take advantage of photoshop feature. The advantage of this book are:1. The author has written this book in a very easy way to understand each chapter in this book. She use a simple language with a step by step exercise to teach you each feature and technique use in photoshop.2. The screen shot in the book is full color, so it is very easy for you to understand the topic when you apply something on an image.3. The DVD that came with the book also include the video that will teach you in summary of each lesson. If you found anything thing topic that is not clear, you can view the video for the misunderstanding point. Note: Please don't watch only a video and not read the book. The video is good for you only after you finish reading each chapter from the book.I only found one disadvantage of this book is the arrangement of the lesson. The author decide to put overal topic in the first lesson and tell you if you are the beginner you should start with chapter 2 and after finish all chapter then return to this chapter. I found this point could make the reader confuse about their starting point. At the time that I start to read this book, I also wonder why only the first chapter has include some advance topic like 3D, masking... This chapter should be move to the last chapter and the beginning user could start reading without any confuse.After completed this book, you should try to find another more advance topic to read about photoshop if you want to do more advance technique with photoshop.I plan to give this book 4.5 star, but since I do not have the way to do this I decide to give this book only 4 stars (minus one star because of the arrangement of the TOC was not so well).Thank,Kanel

Ever since I got stung by the Photoshop bug several years ago, I've kept up with Adobe's new releases for this particular software and I always like to get a good instructional book to show me its new features. Usually the books published by Peachpit Press are the ones I find very informative and well-written. This time Peachpit Press was late in getting out the book by Scott Kelby, which I've always like, so I decided to try my luck with this book. I was in for a very pleasant surprise for the simple reason that this book includes a DVD with videos for every lesson, and those videos are well-made, informative, and have good production quality. The videos make it a lot easier to understand what it is expected from the lessons in the book, and they alone are worth the price of the book. I'm still giving it a 5-stars rating even though the last three lessons are dedicated to features which are not included in my version of the software, they're part of the Extended version only.I definitely recommend this book to those who, like me, are newbies and advanced amateur users of Adobe Photoshop CS4.

I upgrading to Photoshop CS4 from Photoshop 7 so I was in need of some training on seven years of development. I had a pretty good foundation of Photoshop while earning my Graphic Design degree in college so I was looking for something that wasn't geared to the absolute beginner.This Digital Classroom series book fit the bill exactly. Each lesson builds off the previous in some regards, but important ideas are continually reviewed throughout the text. The important keyboard shortcuts are taught and used extensively. The chapters on layers and masks were the most useful, allowing me to have much more control over image adjustments.The accompanied disk, with short video instruction, was well done and offered instruction for both Apple and Windows based machines. I felt the lesson length was very manageable for someone on a tight schedule. You could easily get through the book in a long weekend but I found it better to take the lessons in short one hour increments. The layout of the lessons makes this very easy to do.Overall, a phenomenal lesson manual for using CS4! I would easily recommend this series to anyone looking for instruction on Adobe software.

If you're new to Photoshop, this book gives you the essentials of the program. It then goes beyond the basics and shows you handy techniques in this very robust program. The exercises are step by step, and even in the early chapters experienced users can pick up handy tips for routine processes. The integration of the text and the disk is well done, but you can learn from the book even without the computer explanations. A particularly handy quick overview is the video summary of each chapter. Worth the money because it allows the user to get the most out of his or her investment in the Photoshop program.

I've spent a small fortune on CS4 books in the past 4-6 months, and can honestly say this is the first one that was understandable, especially coupled with the videos that explain each chapter. There may be some details that would cause this book to not qualify for the full five star rating, but I'm too new or dumb to know the difference at this point. What I do know is that I've understood how to use masks for the first time... and it is soooo easy! Wish I had found this book first.

I bought this book for a college class. Though I could have used the digital copy provided by the university, I have a difficult time following along and going back and forth between windows. The purchase was well worth it. If you use the accompanying CD and do each tutorial step by step, you will learn much in just a few lessons. The first lesson was a bit confusing as it starts out with a more advanced tutorial and THEN starts at the beginning. I suspect the first lesson is to grab attention so the reader gets an idea of just how awesome Photoshop can be. I'm completely new to Photoshop, but I feel more and more confident the more I use this book! Straight A's in this class, so far!

These Adobe Digital Cleassroom Books were a must have for my Media Production degree. I would recomend them to anyone wanting to learn any of thew Adobe Products. Fantastic!

I have tried Photoshop CS4 for Dummies and found it frustrating after 140 pages of theoretical introduction to the environment with no exercises - at the end of the day you just want to get started using the program. I was disappointed with Photoshop CS4 for Dummies as I found Dreamweaver CS4 for Dummies really useful.I purchased Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom and I am amazed at the quality, clear tuition with superb worked examples which have made me realise the potential that can be achieved with this amazing program.All exmples and lessons are backed up with great video and image files (all are included on the supplied DVD). The first lesson gets you working immediately. Each lesson introduces the environment bit by bit as you need it within the practical lessons showing you a number of ways in which to achieve the same goal. Keyboard shortcuts are introduced together with mouse control.I cannot praise the the author: Jennifer Smith, enough - this is an excellent training course which has been designed by a team of superb trainers that leave nothing to chance and consistently hand hold the student every step of the way.In summary - clear video lessons, supported exactly with excellent and detailed book lesson exercises to support you working with the supplied images which enable you to utilise the key features of Photoshop.It is by far the best software tutorial for beginners that I have ever used.One further point - it also guides you to other Adobe training resources on the web (including the URLs) for further investigation.

It's okay, nothing special honestly epsecially if you know your way around photoshop, was forced to get it for my college course but we never even opened it.

I bought this after reading the revive. Unfortunately this is a waste of money for me. You are learning only the very basic and I felt why they didn't include at least one more exercise for each chapter explaining a bit into little advanced information.Of course you will learn by any books but some books are only for business but not for proper learning.I have learned a bit (Thanks) from this book but have nothing special. If I had bought this before 'Classroom in a Book' I would have given 5*s but compare to that 3* is bit too much. If I didn't open the video I would have returned this book, in other hand it is the catch.