Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Classroom in a Book (Book & CD-ROM)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

The CD-ROM contains no videos, only still images used in working line by line through tasks/demonstrations in the book. I found that Classroom in a Book required a great deal of intensity and concentration. Am also realizing that I will not retain the skills and possibilities worked through. Mastery will require much repetition over time. To its credit, the Classroom is thorough and will provide a great step-by-step resource for me to turn to in the future. Part of the problem is that Photoshop Elements 7 is a powerful program possessing many possibilities that the average consumer is not likely to use.

After working with digital images for a number of years and using several image editing programs, I decided to look at Photoshop Elements 7 to see if it offered improved and additional features. I was not surprised to find a great number of similarities, but there were indeed improvements and features that I could use. This prompted me to explore the program in greater detail.
To do this, I secured three second party books and set out to learn as much as I could about Elements. All these books helped me learn what I had hoped to, but of the three, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Classroom in a Book proved to be the most comprehensive and preferred source of information.
I found Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Classroom in a Book to be extremely valuable in helping me to understand the layout and structure of the program. In addition to a program overview, it gave detailed information about how to execute program features, while providing a way to get "hands on" experience about what was being explained in writing. The books lesson format, including a CD with images necessary to complete the lessons, was the next best thing to actually being in a classroom. This also allowed me to work at my own pace and to a degree selectively learn about program features of interest.
At the end of each chapter, there were review questions (with answers) which if answered correctly insured that I had indeed learned what was intended.
In addition to explaining how to use the programs options, it gave examples about how to use them together to create projects to get the results I wanted.
I must admit that I have not read the book from cover to cover. That would be too much like having to go back to school. However, once I understood the layout of the book and the basic features of the program, I found that this book was a valuable resource and reference that I could use whenever I needed for additional information.

Adobe(R) Photoshop 7.0 Classroom in a Book

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.

If you can only buy ONE PSE book, make it this one. Comes with a CD with lesswon photos which you load onto your hard drive then work through the book. Real "hands on" learning. A great help.

This product is outstanding for teaching someone like myself who has little or no experience with Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. An absolute must have.

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.

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.

This was an excellent resource for learning how to use Photoshop Elements 7! The step by step lessons were easy to follow and were ideal for a novice.