Julieanne Kost's "Comprehensive Photoshop Training": Next Best Thing to a Live-in Teacher

There are several different ways to approach learning Photoshop: you can either muddle through the manuals and make use of some of the great books on the market and teach yourself. Or you can take classes and join user groups and learn from teachers and other users (expensive and time consuming, but a fun way to learn). But my favorite method for learning the program has long been the use of instructional DVDs. The benefits of DVDs are many: you get to see what an instructor is doing on your computer screen and you get to listen to them teach. Plus, you can go pause, repeat, go back or skip ahead to specific lessons as many times as you like.

One of the best--and easily the most complete--DVD training I've ever seen on Photoshop (in this case CS3) is Julianne Kost's Comprehensive Photoshop Training set from Software Cinema. This three-disc set includes more than 23 hours of lessons from Adobe's highly-regarded Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist. I've only had time to spend a few hours with the series (and I'll review more as I get further into the set), but I just can't imagine a more complete, easy-to-understand and beautifully taught series of tutorials. OK, while I might find Katrin Eismann's (she also has DVD training with Software Cinema) quirky sense of humor makes me laugh a bit more at times, Julieanne has a wonderfully patient and confident tone in all of her lessons. The lessons are very relaxed and extremely easy to follow.

(continued) 

One of the things I particularly like about this series of training videos is that they are exceedingly well organized. One disc one, for example, Julieanne starts with an overview of the program, talks about color management (don't skip that section--it's an essential aspect of learning the program) then starts with the very basics of the program: navigation (including a thorough look at the tool bars), image sizing, simple tools like cropping and rotation and then, of course, gets into the meat of Photoshop techniques: layers, masking, dodging/burning, color correction (and color changing), compositing, filters, etc. As an aside, since I had just switched to CS3 when I got these discs, the training is also serving as a very timely look at the changes in the program update--very useful--and Julieanne is particularly good at pointing out subtle differences in the upgrade, dialog boxes, etc.

On disc two she moves into more advanced training, including customizing your workspace, using fills (including patterns and gradients), retouching poraits, photo restoration, sharpening, using the "extract" tool (one of the most useful selection tools you can master), as well as things like layer styles, typographiy and bit depth. Disc three (and I will review this disc separately later) goes into an in-depth look at file navigation, file management, sorting/rating/labeling files (my personal downfall is organization, so I really need these lessons!) and creating slideshows.

As I said I've only done four or five hours of lessons so far (and again, there are a whopping 23 hours of training on these three discs), but I'm highly impressed. DVDs weren't even invented when I first studied Photoshop (at Kodak's Center for Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine--does anyone remember that wonderful, magical place?), but I would have sold my first born to have had this kind of training back then. If you are new to Photoshop or even if you're moderately to very skilled, Julieanne's very detailed and organized lessons are a wonder to behold and you will never regret the time spent with them.

While the price might seem a bit steep at first (around $300), the fact is that's less than the cost of a single course at most workshops and you just can't buy this level of intense and  thorough training anywhere else. If you're serious about learning Photoshop, or if it's a part of your photo business that you pass off to labs or assistants, buy yourself a present and get this set of discs. As I go forward, I'll be curious to see how involved the training gets in things like making selections and using layer styles, since those are things that you encounter with almost every image, and I'll certainly talk more about those lessons in future reviews as I delve deeper into the discs.

The bottom line though, I think, is that you'll learn more here than you will from a semester-long class in Photoshop and you'll have the instructor right next to your computer when you get lost or forget how a certain tool works.  And until someone like Kodak opens up a great school like CCI again, this is the most personal type of training you'll find.