Jeff Wignall's "The Joy of Digital Photography"

Software Cinema 50%-off Sale on Select Training DVDs

Here's a quick tidbit that will save you serious bucks on some great training DVDs: Software Cinema is having a 50% off sale on selected older titles. Titles on sale include Katrin Eismann's "Image Restoration, Repair & Enhancement" (everything you always wanted to know about rescuing older photographs), Jane Conner-ziser's "Pro Studio Retouching with Photoshop" (including a master class on retouching eyes), Jim DiVitale's "Compositing Images" and Dave Montizambert's "Scanning Images for Photoshop. Also on the sale list is Ben Willmore's  DVD on "Advanced Masking" which I haven't seen yet but I'm sure is just as great as all of Ben's extremely useful training materials and books. (Hey, speaking of Ben, check out Ben Willmore's blog for some good reading.)

I'm a huge fan of Software Cinema's training DVDs and hardly a week goes by that I'm don't pop in a Katrin Eismann DVD and learn something new. These are all older DVDs (most of them probably CS2-based training) but the information never goes stale and can easily be adpated to newer versions of Photoshop. The training that Eismann, Willmore and others put into their lessons is world-class information that you shouldn't be without--and now you can get it at half price.

The sale code (only on selected items) is SCW1008A and is only good until November 1st, so tarry not! 

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.

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