[Author's note: This is a review for a Photoshop 7 tutorial. For those of you who use PS Elements, keep an eye open for our upcoming Photoshop Elements 2 tutorial review.]

Photoshop is a complex program; you can use it for years and still not know many of its secrets. To say nothing of the new tools and actions that are added with every new version.

That is exactly the boat I was in. I have been using Photoshop for five or six years now to do various editing tasks. And I've been using it almost daily for the past three years as my photography has switched almost totally toward digital imaging. Like many people, I never took any classes or seminars on how to use the program to the best of its potential. I just stumbled along on my own.

There are three basic references/learning tools that you can use to learn most anything.

You can take a class. For many people this is the best way to learn. You get to be shown right in front of you how to do something. And if you are confused you can ask the teacher to explain it again. However, classes are expensive, take up time that many of us don't have, and can be a non-possibility for those who live away from universities or big cities.

You can buy a book and learn from it. There have got to be almost 100 books on the various versions of Photoshop. Most are big and many contain everything you would ever need to know about using the program. But books can be hard to learn from. You have nobody to ask questions of and you don't get to see examples performed in front of you.

You can get a video tutorial. While video tutorials aren't new, they are gaining new life through the use of CD-ROMs, DVDs and streaming internet video lessons. While you still don't get to ask questions of a teacher, you do get to see examples of the lessons performed in front of you. And if you feel confused, you can go back and watch the lesson again. While more expensive than (most) PS books, tutorials are cheaper than taking a class. Also, unlike a class, you can learn at your own speed at home in your own time.

Today's review is on the "Learning Adobe Photoshop 7: With Bruce Heavin" CD-ROM from http://www.lynda.com. Lynda is one of the companies offering a complete line of software tutorial CDs. Their titles cover everything from operating systems (XP, OSX), internet/web software (Dreamweaver, Flash), to complex multimedia programs (Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator). There are sample lessons from most of the tutorials on their website.

Lynda.com also has the option to subscribe to their online library which allows you to watch lessons from many of their titles as streaming video for $25 a month. This might be useful if you are time rich and money poor as the CD sets range from $30-$150. This particular tutorial set has a retail price of $150, which is what tutorials for the more complex programs seem to be priced at.

What you need

You must have a Macintosh G3 running OS 8.6-10 with a CD drive and at least 64 MB of RAM. Alternatly, you must have a Pentium II machine running Windows 98se/ME/NT/2000/XP with a CD drive and a minimum of 64MB RAM. With either platform, you must have the latest version of Quicktime (QT 6 as of this writing) installed. Obviously, you should also have a copy of Photoshop. Though it isn't required of course, it is extremely useful to be able to go through and try out what you have learned right away. Because I run both Windows and Mac computers, I was able to watch the tutorial on one and play with Photoshop on the other at the same time. While this is not crucial, it was a pretty neat way to follow along with the lessons.

Overview

The tutorial is hosted by Bruce Heavin. He essentially takes you through Photoshop step by step. Starting with the most simple procedures of opening files and moving along to more complicated tasks like using "adjustment layers" and automating tasks to create a contact sheet or web gallery. The entire table of contents can be found at http://www.lynda.com/products/videos/ps7cd/pages/toc.html There are a total of 18 hours of lessons on three CDs.

My opinion

For some reason, the CDs didn't "autorun" when I put them in the CD drive. I'm not sure if they were supposed to or not. But I had to open the CD folder and double click on the tutorial icon to play the lessons.

The lessons are presented in a format that should let you either watch them straight through or jump back to the menu and pick and choose your way through. It worked well enough, but sometimes I couldn't get the controls to open up while watching a lesson. Without the controls I couldn't get back to the menu. So I ended up having to close the program and reopen it again. Which was no big deal since it only took seconds to do. But I guess what I'm saying is that the design layout was a bit glitchy for me. But systems vary, and that could have been a result of a problem with my computer rather than the CDs.

Bruce is a knowledgeable teacher. It is obvious that he has spent a lot of time using Photoshop. However, I have a problem listening to his lessons for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. It may be his vocal patterns or just his effort to speak slowly and clearly, but I can only deal with it in small chunks or I start to "zone out." This is likely a VERY personal opinion though. And it should also be noted that I am not known for my long attention span, I was a horrible student in school because of this. (Bruce, if you are reading this, you have a fine voice and I am not trying to be insulting. You just put me to sleep sometimes.) My only other beef is that he has an alarming tendency to use photos of himself for his examples. Nothing wrong with this, he's a fine looking man. But it gets pretty scary when he is zooming in on his facial pores and using the "sharpen" filter to show how bad an image can look when over sharpened. *shudder*

The lessons themselves are fairly thorough. When Bruce talks about a particular part of Photoshop you witness what happens on his screen as he uses the program. He uses a Macintosh, but is pretty good about bringing up any differences in a particular command between the Mac and Windows versions of PS. The differences between the two are few, so you should not be concerned if you are a Windows user.

Overall, the tutorial is geared more for someone who has had little experience with Photoshop. If you have been using the program a while, you will feel a little bored through most of the first CD and parts of the other two. But, and this is important, it will be well worth your while to watch it all the way through. Because even in the simplest of lessons, you can learn a new trick or tip that you didn't know about. This is especially true if you are upgrading to Photoshop 7. Just in the lesson about the "file browser" I learned that you can batch rotate images before opening them. It was a simple thing that I could have learned had I bothered to look, but since I didn't, it was news to me. And there were a lot of other things like "layer grouping" and "Illustrator integration" that I just had never bothered to learn, but should have.

Though the lessons do a very good job for the beginner, Bruce has a funny way of throwing in a term or concept early on that the beginner will likely be confused by (like talking about "RGB color-space" in an early lesson without explaining what that is). The good news is that everything does get explained eventually. You just have to stick with it. Writing down anything that you don't understand might be a good idea.

Conclusion

$150 is a decent chunk of change. But it's a lot less than a Photoshop class or seminar, and you can learn at home on your own schedule. Beginners will love the approach, but more experienced users will be a little bored during some parts (though they will still learn some good tips). I liked having my two computers setup so that I could run PS on one and watch the lessons on the other. But for those who don't have that option, it might have been nice if these lessons were on DVD instead of CD. As many people have an extra TV & DVD player they could watch the tutorial on. It would have been nice to have a glossary of terms that people could reference if they hear something that they don't understand. As it is, I would suggest getting a good Photoshop reference book to sit along side your computer while you watch the lessons.

All in all, the CDs are a good way to turn yourself into a solid "intermediate" Photoshop user. Well worth the money and time in my opinion.

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