I thought this would be a good book to learn Photoshop with because it came from the software maker. Unfortuately this was not the case. By following the book's instructions, I was not able to add a simple border to an image. I ended up doing a Google search from which I found the instructions on an online forum. As it turned out the Adobe book had left out a step of how to select the image. (You can't just click on the image) So, as a result of this missing step, the menu item I needed was grayed out so I couldn't add the border. Also, the pictures in the book are not in color, they are black & white only. This makes it difficult to figure out which tool bar icon they are trying to get you to go to.

I just bought another Photoshop book because this one is useless.

its great book its have many many things i dont know it before in using the photoshop and this book is learn me too much things in easy way its beeterr than teacheeres and cheaper go for it

This book helped me out a lot. I'm glad I purchased it. I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop CS.

The book and CD arrived in a very short time in excellent condition. I am very pleased with it thank you.

If you buy used, be sure the CD is included as it is essential to following the lessons. I am ordering a second copy, new, so I will have the CD.

I read this book here in Brazil.I'm an agronomist(jobless) here in Brazil and I like to read books.
I read this book translated to the portuguese.This book is great in size.The lessons are good.The main problem of this book are the photos.Almost all of them are B&W.This book is good, but the photos are weak.

it was the wrong book for a class i needed. Didn't even open it.

I have just received my copy. I have not read it yet, just looked
at it casually and to my horror I found that all illustrations
are Black & White except for a few pages in the middle as in
dictionaries published 40 years ago when color was too expensive.
Shame to Adobe. How can anyone appreciate Photoshop capabilities?
This fact is not clearly mentioned in the book description
and is barely understood from the contents of another review.

This was a great purchase and has helped me a lot since i purchased it.

The Adobe Creative Team consistently produces the most powerful tutorials for Adobe products, and their manual for Adobe Photoshop CS is no exception. They are always well organized with clearly explained, excellent, and practical excercises.

As a professional Photoshop trainer, I still rely on these manuals to bring me up to date on the newest features in new releases of the software. The learning experience is greatly enhanced by working through actual excercises and provides an understanding of how and when features can be used for a personal creative approach.

A word of warning-Photoshop is an extremely powerful program and both the software and the manual can be extremely overwhelming for those who have had little experience with computer graphics. Anyone wanting or needing to use Photoshop, but finding the self teaching approach daunting, I highly recommend some type of classroom training. But even in this setting Adobe Photoshop CS Classroom in a Book will provide an excellent source for the practical application of the program.

I have found this book to be a valuable resourse for teaching Photoshop CS to Graphic Design students. I could recomend it to anyone wishing to learn how to use Photoshop CS.

Said it was used, but doesnt look used at all. Came fast and easy!

This book was received very quickly. Unfortunately the book is coming apart from its binding after a very short time of use.

A great learning experience. I now understand how and why some techniques work. This is helping me to see how I can use them in my own work.

My most interesting class this term. The book is full of information and very helpful. You can teach yourself just off of reading this material.
Excellent buy.

This explains 90% of photoshop's functions and abilities. The other 10% comes with practice and experience. I highly reccommend it.

I found that by lesson nine the pages were falling out of the book. At $45 it should not fall apart that easily.

I thought the end projects were often simplistic. But it does go through several of the new features. I wasn't impressed with the depth of the book.

Also there were a lot of here put this in your picture, and you are done, but no how do I do that piece that you are haing me put in. Or set this at 50% but not why they chose 50% or what other options could be used for the same picture to get different variations.

And I am really annoyed that it is falling apart. Adobe should have done better.

PhotoShop cs classroom in a book provides new users of PhotoShop good step by step lessons and will help a user build a good PhotoShop foundation. The book covers the more basic functions of PhotoShop but does not go into some of the more detailed aspects of PhotoShop that experienced users would be looking for. It also does not really explore how to use it in conjunction with other Adobe products like Illustrator or Go Live. Those that are trying to learn how to build web pages or design ads will be disappointed by this. Those that are more advanced users of PhotoShop will be disappointed. The book never really states intended PhotoShop user ability level but it is mostly for the beginner to intermediate level user.

I've been working with Photoshop for a few years now, but I was self-taught. When I got CS, I decided to work through a course book to catch up on anything I was missing.

I did not get as much out of this book as I hoped. It really is aimed at the newbie who wants to create & edit projects ASAP, with little explanation surronding the tools they're using.

For example, you're directed to go to a tool in the Filter menu, check off these two boxes and enter 70% here, then click ok. There's little explanation for why you'd want to check those boxes, or why you'd enter 70 and not 38.

I think this is a good beginner's course, especially for someone who will take the time to go beyond what's presented in the book, and play with the tools to figure out what they do.

This wasn't really a classroom in a book. It didn't guide me like a class & that is what I expected. Little disappointed with my first purchase in this series.

"Adobe Photoshop CS Classroom in a Book" contains a wealth of information and well-designed lessons.
It also contains pages, however, which began to fall out by the time I had reached Chapter 3.
I would have been glad to spend an extra dollar or so for a product I could have referred back to time and again.
It's a shame to see this excellent content presented in such a shabby manner. Educationally, the book is well worth the price, but physically it is not.

For the price of a boxed Photoshop CS, the Classroom In a Book (CIB) for Photoshop CS should have been included as a free guide inside the box. While it teaches the basics of photoshop cs, the writing of the CIB is really devoid of style and humor. It makes for a passable alternate user's manual. (That's because the Photoshop CS Visual Quickstart Guide does a much better job of getting to the point.) If you are just beginning the CIB for Photoshop CS might be a useful introduction. Just be aware you have other, much better PS CS Guides.

It is so easy to get frustrated in Photoshop and to give up on this amazing piece of software if you start learning it with the wrong tools. "Wrong" is of course relative and so as far as Im concerned, the CIB is not the ideal first book on Photoshop to use.

Get yourself a lively, entertaining book on the subject. Instead of the CIB, I highly recommend the clear, and fast-paced Teach Yourself Photoshop CS in 24 Hours, and the highly entertaining, well organized Photoshop CS for Dummies (get the 10-books-in-one version!)

When you've learned the ropes you can go on to more advanced techniques using Photoshop CS Artistry or Real World Adobe Photoshop CS.

Just remember your FIRST book on Photoshop will set the "color and texture" of your own feelings towards the software. It can spell the difference between starting right or getting frustrated in Photoshop! Therefore it's best if you can browse the contents of the books yourself to see which really feels right for you before you buy it.

I teach people who are not computer professionals to create palmcards and other outreach material. The material needs to be catchy for people to read it. I use this book to teach folks how to make great literature, and classes are much better with this book than any other. Professionals this book is NOT for you. It is not meant to be a guide where you have a problem and want a one-page discussion of a fix. That is what the Bible Series (Photoshop CS Bible) is for. Or on a easier level, what the Visual Quickstart Guide series is for. However, beginners and non-computer professionals cannot learn with books like this. They need books that teach all the tools and features systematically with fun, relevant projects. The projects in this book are grouped according to skill learned, ex. layers, masking, selection tools, and are fun. Sure color would be great, but my students could not afford this. Hell, they are constantly borrowing my copy because they can't even afford the black & white copy! The lessons are so fun students don't even know how much they are learning. I highly recommend this book for newer computer students, or non-professional students. Thanks you Adobe Creative Team!

My main problem with this book is that 90% of it is in black and white. Now you may think that that is a bit petty but when dealing with this kind of subject matter I think that its important not to cut corners.

I should have realized that the Classroom in a Book series is exactly what it says - it is definietly NOT a resource guide for those with specific problems and pressing deadlines. It may be a good introduction for those with unlimited time, but as a professional, it has been more frustrating that useful.

I am very disappointed with this book. This book does not list or highlight the new features being added to the Photoshop CS. Most of the centents are the same as "Photoshop 7 classroom in a book". If you want to learn the new features in the Photoshop CS, this is not the book for you.

I'm not sure why other reviewers gave negative reviews - I think the classroom in a book is a great intro to Photoshop CS. I bought it, having zero experience with Photoshop, and in days I was manipulating photos in ways I never thought possible. My wife is working through the course now, and she's having similar results. I highly recommend this book to those who are new to Photoshop.

I will say, however, that you have to have at least a double digit IQ to be able to understand and follow the steps in the lessons...

In addition to the Lessons folder (which contains the art source files for 20 lessons), there is a Folder with 35 Fonts, so that you can do the lessons.

It starts by telling you how to navigate the application, such as understanding the tools and palettes, using the image browser, defining and saving work spaces, and jumping to Image Ready and back. (Photoshop comes with a powerful application for making image maps, animated GIFs, rollovers for the web, etc. Chapters 14 - 18 cover Image Ready and its Photoshop features.)

It tells you how to use the automated features for output. You can create a PDF presentation from the File Browser, save photos into a Web Gallery, make a Photo Package or a Contact Sheet.

Lesson 6 is all about masking and its many variations, such as gradient masks. Hidden in this chapter is the Extract command, showing you how to extract an image from its background.

It covers retouching and repairing photos, painting and editing, which includes blending images into a background and use of the History Palette.

Advanced layer techniques (Lesson 11) include creating clipping paths, adjustment layers, knock-out masks, importing layers from other files, using the liquify tool and more.

ThereÕs even a pretty good discussion of Camera Raw (page 64) and the stuff you should know about it.

Taught me everything I needed to know, and quickly.

Like many people out there, I've been using computers for decades, and while I've dabbled with Photoshop over the years to do layer-based image touch-ups, enhancements, resizes, and related simplistic tasks (making tape/CD covers, greeting cards, etc.), I've never taken the time to work through a book to learn the other features of the program.

Adobe Photoshop CS Classroom in a Book (CIAB) is a worthwhile starting point for users who know how to use their computers, but might only know how to use some of the functions of Photoshop. This book spends most of its time on layers, masks, pen tools, and webpage basics (slices, animation, and image maps).

I found the pen tool chapter to be the most useful, since I had never really understood how vector-based drawing worked, and I am now eager to learn the basics of Adobe Illustrator CS as well.

The webpage chapters are also good for those who have lots of ideas in their mind about how their webpage should look, but don't have intuitive tools to do it. ImageReady CS (included with Photoshop CS or Adobe Creative Suite) makes creating precise web graphics, image maps, etc. almost too easy.

I found several errors in the book that occur in later chapters, but none of them prevented me from completing the lessons. There are some spelling, grammatical, and formatting errors throughout the text. However, these will not prevent the average user from running into roadblocks. The biggest error occurs in Lesson 15, where the image references in the sample HTML file do not correspond with the actual image filenames. Basic HTML/text editing can fix this, but as an official Adobe product, this should have been found before duplicating the CD-ROM which accompanies this book.

Otherwise, the lessons are presented well and are very easy to follow. The text is clear and easy on the eyes. I was able to complete all 20 lessons in about 4 days. To get the most out of this book, it would be wise to complete a lesson, and then apply what you learned to your own project to help with retention of the material.

Overall, a good first step to other more in-depth texts. I'd like to see full-color in future installments, as well as more detailed descriptions on why certain selections and options are chosen. Also, I think the monitor and color calibration chapters should be moved to an earlier part of the book. It's odd that these are the last topics covered, especially since topics like levels and color correction precede it.

This book would be good for beginners except for the fact that it skips some important steps that need to be taken. This was obviously written by someone who knows photoshop very well, however instead of going step by step as if writing for someone who has never touched photoshop he skips steps that more advanced users would catch on to, but a beginner would be left far behind wondering what they did wrong.
Fortunately it has a pretty cover and a nice price tag along with a few helpful items.

If you are a beginner....look elsewhere. The manual is a better place to start.

Subtle and blantant errors ruin what would otherwise be a decent guide into Adobe products. Most chapters in this series of books leave out vital information or the exercises on the included CDs are missing files or do not match the printed materials.