An extremely useful thing covered is how to get into Bridge and do impressive things from inside this application, especially with RAW files (which are becoming popular both with DSLR still cameras and with motion picture cameras like the RED One and Scarlet.) Other useful explorations look at automating common tasks in Photoshop, converting images to black and white with best quality results, secrets of retouching images, and how to get better image adjustments via manipulating channels effectively.
Interest
Level
Justin Seeley has great pacing and a comfortable voice that won’t soothe you to sleep. He has an energy that seems highly related to that of an infomercial spokesperson, which is actually quite a compliment for a trainer. Many trainers tend to speak like teachers, whereas an infomercial spokesperson gets you excited about whatever gadget he’s selling. Seeley makes you excited about all the things Photoshop CS3 capable of, which is great because he’s getting you excited about a program you already own. This means you’re far more likely to want to keep exploring after you stop your training. I found that I would pause the training a number of times and just explore concepts with different results before returning to the actual course!
With that said, all training has a saturation point and you’re certainly not going to sit down and knock out 8 hours of training in a single setting without being overwhelmed. However, Seeley’s training takes substantially longer to get to a saturation point than many comparable training packages, which is a good measure of him as a trainer.
Reusability
This DVD series is extremely reusable as it really covers a lot of information that you will find useful for both photographic and videographic needs.
However, there are some RAM issues that may make this series a bit annoying to reuse for a few select areas. This is because the actual training series uses a decent chunk of RAM, and there are a few exercises where you need to use three additional RAM-hungry programs at once (Photoshop, Bridge, & InDesign.) As such, folks who have less than two gigs of RAM are going to find this section moves sluggishly and should be prepared for this. (Luckily, these sections aren’t terribly long.)
