Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 [With CDROM]

This is my second Adobe "Classroom In A Book" (CIB). The books are just what they represent. They are classes. You start at the beginning and follow all the steps. Sometimes this is slow but if you are a person who wants to start at the very basics and take one methodical step at a time this is the book for you. I have painstakenly worked from lesson 1 through lesson 5 (less than halfway through the book). I must be a slow learner because the earlier lessons took me longer than the 2 hours that they suggested it will take. But now I am starting to understand how the program thinks and I can see myself able to jump around and do things quicker. I have lost interest in the slow lesson by lesson approach and am starting to use the book as a reference manual. It is a better book for teaching you the process than it is as a reference manual. I got stumped on one thing and had to use the online help service for reference because the subject matter did not appear in the index of the CIB. Let me assure you that this is a bit of a complicated program. The reason that this is my second CIB is because I first started learning the full Adobe Photoshop professional version ($600)as a trial. It is not a good choice for most people. The Elements software has proven to be much more user friendly product and was worth the money I paid for it. But it is still quite complex to learn at first. I must say that I would never pay the high cover price for the book. Get it discounted or check it out of the library. I first checked the book out of the library but they only had the book for Elements 6. That was a little frustrating because I started to find a few little things that were different from my Elements 7 version.

I signed up for a Senior Photoshop class at my local community college. and this is the book we used to learn the basic techniques. Our Instructor assigned lessons for homework which he then reviewed and expanded upon at the next class. The book was easy to follow and understand on your own...my only complaint would be the color used for the type in some examples - done in blacks and grays it was a bit hard to read. Now that I've completed my class, the book will be an excellent reference source...easy to go back to reconnect with a particular tool or adjustments to a photo.

This is a very easy to understand lesson-oriented teaching guide to Elements 7. Having had some experience with other photo editing programs, I was a bit bored with several areas in several lessons, but I stayed with it and followed it page by page and learned to use Elements very quickly. The book explains things well, although there are several vague issues when it refers to something that we haven't seen (or haven't seen for a long time), such as "click on the 'something-or-other'" and doesn't tell you (again perhaps) where to find the click item, causing some minor frustration as you go back to find the reference to that point, or search the entire screen to find it. All in all, however, I still give it five stars for being a well laid out set of lessons that make the learning very easy.

This book is an excellent training aid for me. I would prefer to take a class, but wasn't able to get into one at the local community college. Rather than fumble with Elements 7.0 software, I bought the book, set up the lessons on the CD that accompanies it, and began class. FOR ME and MY learning style this is a perfect method for becoming proficient with Elements 7.0. I purchased 7.0 to replace Elements 3.0 and I am able to use Elements 7.0 far easier than I used Elements 3.0! Perhaps not as good as a class (for questions and seeing the mistakes of others), with a little dedication and effort I feel quite comfortable with Elements 7.0.

Being new to Photoshop, "Elements 7, Classroom in a Book", clearly explains the different aspects of the program. Each chapter, which covers a specific task, was easy to follow and actually fun to do working with the tutorials. It is a great resource to refer back to when needed.