Adobe Photoshop 5.0 Classroom in a Book

You don't need to know the previous versions of the program to get right to work. You use the practice files on the included hybrid CD-ROM as you follow the lessons throughout the book. There are step-by-step instructions, explanations of features, and plenty of illustrations to help you as you work, and each chapter has review questions and answers.

First you learn the basics of the interface as you tour the options for selecting, using layers and filters, painting, retouching, and saving files. Next, you learn the essentials of opening files, navigating the interface, getting help, and creating layers and selections. After that the chapters get much more specific, teaching you how to use the paint, editing, and pen tools; work with selections, masks, channels, and layers; and apply photo-retouching techniques and special effects. You also learn how to combine graphics from Adobe Illustrator with those from Photoshop, prepare images for the Web, manage two-color print jobs, and fine-tune color preferences for ideal output. The projects involve both fine art and commercial art---everything from composite images to color-corrected photographs. Finally, you work with Adobe ImageReady 1.0, the new package for creating images and animations for the Web and other multimedia projects.

A full-color section shows you the finished artwork from the various chapters, color models, and, in a few cases, the various versions of an image as you apply changes to it. This section also shows you how to use all the Toolbox tools, including the selection, paint, stamp, sharpen, sponge, pen, type, gradient, eyedropper, zoom, and measure tools. This section is particularly helpful for users who are trying to get up to speed with Photoshop's many features. This tutorial will take you well past basic interface issues and have you creating some pretty amazing images.

Product Description
Classroom in a Book is a self-paced learning course in a hands-on workbook. Each book offers complete training based on real-world projects. Practical, focused lessons are designed to fit into busy schedules and teach the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Included are both intermediate and advanced techniques for Windows and Macintosh. Using the specially created files on the CD-ROM, readers can work through the lessons and projects in the book.

The Classroom in a Book series is one of the best-selling self-paced tutorials ever published, and it is used by professional training companies, universities, corporations, and businesses around the world.

Despite all these advantages, two issues should be emphasized to avoid disappointment. First, this book does not contain much more than can be found in the Photoshop Manual or online help. Therefore, this book can be recommended primarily for the beginners, maybe for some people on the intermediate level, who are learning the basic techniques of Photoshop. It does not go into details of how photoshop can be used to make those amazing tricks with photographs which can be done by photoshop experts. Secondly, this book IS a workbook, a practical tutorial, but not more than that. This means that you read it from the beginning to the end, do the tutorials, hopefully learn a lot, but most likely will never use this book again. This book is not a good reference, and it makes little sense to repeat the lessons more than once or twice. Therefore this book frequently appears on Amazon auctions, sold by people who used it and do not need it anymore. But it is still a great book!


This book truly enables anyone to use Premiere with ease.   July 30, 1999
37 out of 37 found this review helpful

Adobe Premiere Classroom in a Book is by far one of the most useful software guides I have ever purchased. The interactive style allows the user to get the "hands-on learning" needed to truly become proficient using Adobe Premiere. For anyone who uses video software to create quality videos, this is a must have for anyone who uses Premiere.


WOW.......If I had only discovered this series earlier   November 1, 1999
Adobe Fanatic (Connecticut, USA)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful

I just spent a great deal of money to learn this program. If I had only had the book sooner, I could of saved almost a months rent. The book is designed to teach all users of all skill levels at a pace in which they feel comfortable. Each lesson is laid out logically in a very dynamic user freindly fashion. You are immediately impressed with the programs ability before even making it past page 23. What I liked best about this style of book was that you can learn at your own pace. You decide when its time to move forward. It takes the functions that you learn on one lesson and incorporates them into the next. Therefore enhancing and strengthning your knowledge. I am so impressed with the series that I will be purchasing the remainder of the books available for the programs I already own


This is a great book.   November 26, 1998
17 out of 17 found this review helpful

Adobe's Classroom in a Book series are the best software training books I've ever used. This one is no exception. It's very logical, clear, and well thought-out. The CD that's included is well integrated with the training provided in the book. I also have the Photoshop 5 and PageMaker 6.5 editions, and they're great too.

I wish Macromedia would publish books like this for their products.