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You can learn Photoshop on your own (enough about it anyway) if you get it and use it and read the Adobe manual when you have a question, but.... Scott Withrow wrote: (Re: Adobe Photoshop) > 1. Careful about enrolling in a class, unless the price is reasonable. Community collage full semester classes are usually very reasonable and worth while, but the short 6 week 1 credit hour classes are just too short if you have never used the software before. If you HAVE used the software before, then a seminar can be great. The two best Photoshop seminars that I know of right now are: http://www.photoshopuser.com/pstour.html A great one day seminar for $99, put on by the editor of MacToday Magazine. I learned a lot in there that day and got a great book from it that I still refer to. (Note: Photoshop is the same on a PC and a Mac - and they give you keyboard shortcuts for both in the book). http://www.leewilder.com/ A four day seminar for $199 (early registration). Check the site for each day's topics and seminar locations. I'm going to the one in St. Louis this month on the 23rd-26nd. Everyone that I talk to that went to this one highly recommends it. I'm looking forward to it. You don't want to go to a class or seminar though unless you have used the software first. It helps if you are familiar with the basics of the software first before you walk in the door. That means at least opening the program on the screen and seeing what the tools in the toolbox do, and looking at the drop down menus to see what is there. Don't be intimidated, it is all pretty self explanatory if you click on them and try them. Playing around in Photoshop helps a lot more. Photoshop is not a difficult program to use, but there is a LOT of things you can do in it, and some of them get very complex. Luckily you only need a few simple things to prep an image, and you can then learn whatever else you need or want to learn by playing in the program later. I took two semesters of digital imaging at the community collage here, and we used Photoshop as our primary imaging program in there. That helped too, but it only helped me learn faster (and ask questions along the way), and you can still learn the basic stuff on your own at your own pace just as thoroughly (take the classes if you will be using Photoshop for work and using lots of layers and channels, and color calibrating and doing separations for publication). > Volumes and volumes have been written on PhotoShop, and for the cost of a > good tutorial book, you'd save a fortune over enrolling in a class, and > you get to take things at your own pace. The two best Photoshop books I have found are by Adobe themselves, believe it or not. The Photoshop manual that comes with the software is actually very good (and Photoshop does come with a Tutorial and Training CD ROM that walks you right through basic stuff too), and another great Photoshop book is Adobe's own 'Adobe Photoshop Classroom in a Book'. As for other Photoshop books out there, one of the best that I found and bought is the 'The Photoshop (insert version number here...) Wow! Book', by Dayton and Davis. Another great book is 'Professional Photoshop' (the author escapes me at the moment). Here is also a great Photoshop web site: http://photoshoptips.i-us.com/ If you check this site out, you can't go wrong. A great site for prepping web graphics: http://www.servtech.com/~dougg/graphics/tips.htm > Photoshop is just now hitting v5.0, but I can't > think of any critical function that you couldn't do with v3.0! Right, I am now using 5.0, and it's got some nice additions and improvements, but I can still fire up 3.0 or 4.0.1 and prep an image for the web just as easy. BTW, you can get a BIG discount on Adobe Photoshop software with a student ID card. It is the academic version, but this is still the exact same version as the regular one. They are both the full version. The nice thing is that the price is $249 (for the whole thing - with the same manual) instead of $600+ for 5.0 now (4.0.1 was $549). > Not to mention that the older versions use less RAM, and > require less processor horsepower. You need 32MB RAM on 4.0.1 or you will have many delays and a few strange message boxes. 5.0 says 32 and 64 recommended, but it is a RAM and power hungry dog and I have 128 MB RAM and it still initiates slower than 4.0.1 as it sets up its ICC profile engine and reads your preferences. Once open. 5.0 is at least as fast as 4.0 (with at least 64 MB RAM), but start up of the program takes a while (Adobe Illustrator 7.0 is slow to start too). Don't keep opening the program; just minimize it if you are continually working with images for a while. And set the percentage of the RAM your computer uses for Photoshop to 95% in preferences; it comes set at a useless 50% as default in 5.0. Have fun with Photoshop! Dave Cohen Photographer, Member ASMP Action Photographic Webmaster [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/home/ ======================================================= -> SPORRS: 'Serious Photographers Of Railroad Related Subjects' -> Web Site: http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/sporrs/ -> Message © 1998 SPORRS® - All Rights Reserved =======================================================
