After struggling trying to learn the basics of Photoshop from books, several years ago I eventually bought the 24-hour Total Training video on DVD for Adobe Photoshop CS by Deke McClelland. It covers only CS, not CS2 or CS3. Even though the course is 24 hours, it covered only the basics. Photoshop is an unbelievably powerful and complex tool. Total Training has more recent training videos for CS3, which I do not have.

I think the Total Training video course that I took was quite excellent, and provided an easy and fun way to learn Photoshop, albeit one requiring some dedication due to the length of the course. It takes more time to take the course than the length of the DVDs, since it is an interactive course. The viewer performs tasks on a computer as instructed, necessitating periodic pausing of the video. I took parts of the course twice, and some parts not at all.

Has anyone else tried any of the Total Training videos? If so what do you think? Are there any other methods for learning Photoshop that you recommend?