Amazing! – that about sums up the experience you will have with the lynda.com Photoshop Tutorials, which is why it is our “TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award” winner.
lynda.com produces an impressive line of Photoshop Tutorials for all users. Whether you are just starting out and know nothing about Photoshop, or an experienced photographer or web developer looking for an advanced course for professionals, chances are you will find what you need in one or more of the 42 Photoshop courses offered on DVD from lynda.com. The greatest benefit lynda.com offers customers is not just their selection of training DVD’s, but in their extensive online video tutorial library. This collection of video tutorials covers more than 150 products and is constantly being expanded. For example, the online Photoshop CS4 training course at lynda.com has almost 124 hours of video, and they are still producing more.
Standout Features:
- Monthly subscription available
- Covers nearly all versions of Photoshop
- Many free sample tutorials
The tutorials available at lynda.com can take you from knowing absolutely nothing about Photoshop to being a total Photoshop Ninja. Course instructors make sure you understand how Photoshop works, and how you work within Photoshop, correctly. After all, to be a Photoshop Ninja, you must be one with Photoshop.
Courses on DVD range from $24.95 to $149.95 depending on topic, video length, version, etc. lynda.com also offers a few online subscription options starting at $25 per month. Your subscription includes access to each of the almost 600 training courses offered at lynda.com. The best value is the premium annual subscription which costs $375 and includes access to project files used in each lesson, which is helpful because most of the instructors ask you to reference the files to follow along. Corporate and educational plans are also available and offer discounts.
Adobe Photoshop Tutorials at lynda.com gets right to the point. You will be cropping and editing photos from the moment you begin. Each lesson builds onto what you learned previously, incorporating a variety of tools and features along the way.
Exercise files are available if you are accessing the training lessons from a disk, or if you have the premium online annual subscription. If you don’t have the premium subscription you can’t get the files.
The lynda.com online library is the best way to cram every ounce of value into your learning experience. Free demos are available for each course offered and they are not just sample clips; they are actual step-by-step lessons on how to perform techniques in Photoshop. Visitors are limited to sampling only the first few video tutorials in a course, but the content is great considering it’s free.
lynda.com is very easy to navigate thanks to the convenient drop down boxes located at the top of the home page. Just click on “Products,” then scroll down the list to find which version of Photoshop you are interested in learning about and select it. A course list appears and lets you choose where you would like to start your Photoshop education.
The quality of lynda.com Photoshop Tutorials is amazing. We encourage you to watch the sample videos available and find out for yourself. Watch a tutorial for Photoshop 6 (quite old), and then watch a tutorial for Photoshop CS4 (brand new). By doing this you will notice just how far lynda.com has come in their video production efforts. Watching the newest CS4 tutorials on your computer is just like watching a DVD in your living room. The picture clarity is beautiful and everything on the screen is easy to read.
The video interface is very easy to use and in many cases includes closed captioning. Because the player window doesn’t cover the entire screen, it is easy to flip back-and-forth between Photoshop and the video tutorial so you can follow along with the lesson.
Every Photoshop Tutorial course offered by lynda.com is well organized and has a detailed outline that includes the amount of time each course should take to complete. Each lesson builds on concepts covered previously and the outcome is clear.
One organizational aspect we don’t like is how the lessons don’t play continuously. When you select a video tutorial to watch, it plays through and stops; even if it is only a 2 minute video. It would be nice if it played lessons sequentially like a DVD where selecting the first lesson in a chapter begins the video and then continuously plays through all lessons in that chapter before stopping.
The instructors generally assume you are not familiar with Photoshop or the technical jargon associated with the graphic design industry. Instructors speak naturally as if having a personal conversation with you and invite you to participate in the lessons. They are very professional but never miss the chance to incorporate a sense of humor into the course which makes them quite entertaining.
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