Total Training for Adobe Photoshop CS@

Total Training is the best. They have the best instructors and the most in-depth training videos around.

LJC

wrote in message

Has anyone used this? Did you finf it worthwhile?

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 20:09:34 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

wrote in message

Has anyone used this? Did you finf it worthwhile?

Total Training is the best. They have the best instructors and the most in-depth training videos around.

Or at least they used to; it looks like Saint Deekster (McClelland) has packed up his puffy Renaissance shirts and moved to Lynda.com for the CS3 series; a majour coup for them.

Total Training still do damn fine work, and in answer to the original question yes, I’ve used it. And as I posted elsewhere recently, it probably gave me more "Oh I get it!" moments than any other training course on any subject ever. It’s not cheap, but it gave value.

Nonetheless, for CS3 I’m liable to follow the Deke rather than the publisher. I’d look at Total Training for some other courses, but ultimately the author is the one who makes the content.

But for the CS2 series? A definite "worth having" especially if you’re a PhotoShop virgin as I was when I got it.

So so for them. One problem with Deke is that like Jim Carry once you saw his comedy you saw everything he had. This does nothing however for the completeness and in-depth coverage that Total Training still has. Beats anything Lynda has by a mile.

LJC

"Alan K." wrote in message

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 20:09:34 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

wrote in message

Has anyone used this? Did you finf it worthwhile?

Total Training is the best. They have the best instructors and the most in-depth training videos around.

Or at least they used to; it looks like Saint Deekster (McClelland) has packed up his puffy Renaissance shirts and moved to Lynda.com for the CS3 series; a majour coup for them.

Total Training still do damn fine work, and in answer to the original question yes, I’ve used it. And as I posted elsewhere recently, it probably gave me more "Oh I get it!" moments than any other training course on any subject ever. It’s not cheap, but it gave value.
Nonetheless, for CS3 I’m liable to follow the Deke rather than the publisher. I’d look at Total Training for some other courses, but ultimately the author is the one who makes the content.

But for the CS2 series? A definite "worth having" especially if you’re a PhotoShop virgin as I was when I got it.

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:30:09 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

So so for them. One problem with Deke is that like Jim Carry once you saw his comedy you saw everything he had.

Which unfortunately misses a rather relevant point… he’s not a comedian by trade. No-one buys his products purely for the entertainment value. They buy them because the guy knows his sh*t inside and out and has a way of cutting through and presenting a subject in a brilliantly accessible manner. The light-heartedness that he injects into it is merely the cherry on the cake (for those with a sense of humour at least), not the cake itself.

This does nothing however for the
completeness and in-depth coverage that Total Training still has. Beats anything Lynda has by a mile.

Which also misses my point. At one time Ford had a stranglehold on their market with their Model T as well. This is rather less the case now, because markets and products have a habit of changing. And so the fact that TT has had better products than Lynda in the past doesn’t guarantee that it’ll be that way in the future. The first step in changing that would be for Lynda to get great writers and presenters. The CS3 series that McClelland’s doing for Lynda will be well over 20 hours long. That’s comparable with the length of the TT series that he did for CS2. He’s not going to be doing one-liners for 20+ hours, so it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s going to be every bit as complete and in depth as his previous products for Total Training. In that regard the free clips on the Lynda sites are comparable to the freebies I saw for the TT series on CS2 before I bought it.

It’s the content (which is a function of the person who writes and presents the material) that matters; who publishes it doesn’t matter a damn.

"Alan K." wrote in message

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 20:09:34 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

wrote in message

Has anyone used this? Did you finf it worthwhile?

Total Training is the best. They have the best instructors and the most in-depth training videos around.

Or at least they used to; it looks like Saint Deekster (McClelland) has packed up his puffy Renaissance shirts and moved to Lynda.com for the CS3 series; a major coup for them.

Total Training still do damn fine work, and in answer to the original question yes, I’ve used it. And as I posted elsewhere recently, it probably gave me more "Oh I get it!" moments than any other training course on any subject ever. It’s not cheap, but it gave value.
Nonetheless, for CS3 I’m liable to follow the Deke rather than the publisher. I’d look at Total Training for some other courses, but ultimately the author is the one who makes the content.

But for the CS2 series? A definite "worth having" especially if you’re a PhotoShop virgin as I was when I got it.

As good as TT are and for may part prefer it find the presentation a little too polished and much like watching the news.

The points being put across can also be overly longwinded and laboured and I frequently find I skip through minutes of tedious repetition becasue input errors and duplicated steps are not edited out. This is not only annoying but padding IMO to lengthen the play time.

I paid for content demonstration not duplication. I’d rather the key points were demonstrated directly and then shown in detail in a sub section.

With Lynda I find them a little thin of content.

Duncan

No but people won’t by the products because they tired of the same old lame comedy. He needs to cover the material and get on with it instead of pretending his at a comedy club doing standup.

Scot Kelby is the same way with Photoshop TV. He thinks he is so funny and cute and all he is a drag down for the show and serious people around him.

As for training TT never had a strangle hold. They weren’t even the first ones. They are however the best. I have seen Lynda.com’s products and I can’t say I am impressed. Even if you leave the production quality and distribution methods aside they just don’t cover the subjects very well. They seem to be more concerned with covering a little bit of everything instead of a couple things really well. They also charge too much for their stuff, considering the quality, distribution method, how the stuff is installed and used and how un in-depth it is.

ljc

"Alan K." wrote in message

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:30:09 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

So so for them. One problem with Deke is that like Jim Carry once you saw his comedy you saw everything he had.

Which unfortunately misses a rather relevant point… he’s not a comedian by trade. No-one buys his products purely for the entertainment value. They buy them because the guy knows his sh*t inside and out and has a way of cutting through and presenting a subject in a brilliantly accessible manner. The light-heartedness that he injects into it is merely the cherry on the cake (for those with a sense of humour at least), not the cake itself.

This does nothing however for the
completeness and in-depth coverage that Total Training still has. Beats anything Lynda has by a mile.

Which also misses my point. At one time Ford had a stranglehold on their market with their Model T as well. This is rather less the case now, because markets and products have a habit of changing. And so the fact that TT has had better products than Lynda in the past doesn’t guarantee that it’ll be that way in the future. The first step in changing that would be for Lynda to get great writers and presenters. The CS3 series that McClelland’s doing for Lynda will be well over 20 hours long. That’s comparable with the length of the TT series that he did for CS2. He’s not going to be doing one-liners for 20+ hours, so it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s going to be every bit as complete and in depth as his previous products for Total Training. In that regard the free clips on the Lynda sites are comparable to the freebies I saw for the TT series on CS2 before I bought it.

It’s the content (which is a function of the person who writes and presents the material) that matters; who publishes it doesn’t matter a damn.

"Alan K." wrote in message

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 20:09:34 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

wrote in message

Has anyone used this? Did you finf it worthwhile?

Total Training is the best. They have the best instructors and the most in-depth training videos around.

Or at least they used to; it looks like Saint Deekster (McClelland) has packed up his puffy Renaissance shirts and moved to Lynda.com for the CS3 series; a major coup for them.

Total Training still do damn fine work, and in answer to the original question yes, I’ve used it. And as I posted elsewhere recently, it probably gave me more "Oh I get it!" moments than any other training course on any subject ever. It’s not cheap, but it gave value.
Nonetheless, for CS3 I’m liable to follow the Deke rather than the publisher. I’d look at Total Training for some other courses, but ultimately the author is the one who makes the content.

But for the CS2 series? A definite "worth having" especially if you’re a PhotoShop virgin as I was when I got it.

I have never seen a TT product where they have left in glaring errors. Makes me wonder if you ever have seen their products. You come across more as a troll.

ljc

"Duncan" wrote in message

As good as TT are and for may part prefer it find the presentation a little too polished and much like watching the news.

The points being put across can also be overly longwinded and laboured and I frequently find I skip through minutes of tedious repetition becasue input errors and duplicated steps are not edited out. This is not only annoying but padding IMO to lengthen the play time.

I paid for content demonstration not duplication. I’d rather the key points were demonstrated directly and then shown in detail in a sub section.

With Lynda I find them a little thin of content.

Duncan

Hi ljc,

As for training TT never had a strangle hold. They weren’t even the first ones. They are however the best. I have seen Lynda.com’s products and I can’t say I am impressed. Even if you leave the production quality and

I, for one, do not agree with this – as a first time viewer/potential buyer. I have looked at the free stuff that Lynda has and also the demos that TT has. I hit a really bad demo at TT last night with awful sound and video, but that seems an exception as I did not find any others this am when I was looking (http://www.totaltraining.com/prod/adobe/photoshopcs.asp then play the QT video). I watched the first two chapters of the CS2 channel/masks last night and thought they were well done. I also watched couple of the demos for CS2 on TT and they were also well done. The TT videos (online) have a smaller screen than the Lynda videos but I don’t know if that is just for the demos or if that is also on the DVDs. I don’t see an option to subscribe to online videos at TT like you can do at Lynda. I could get a heck of a lot of knowledge out of one month subscription for $25<g> which I plan on doing over the holidays:)
—
Arnor Baldvinsson
San Antonio, Texas

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:08:23 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

No but people won’t by the products because they tired of the same old lame comedy. He needs to cover the material and get on with it instead of pretending his at a comedy club doing standup.

Well, it’s always impressive to encounter an ego that’s inflated enough to speak comfortably on behalf of "people" as a whole. Meanwhile on THIS planet I did a quick scan of my local bookseller’s web site. They have 23 (current) McClelland titles on PS and other subjects, which obviously doesn’t count ones that he’s written in the past and which are out of print. Now there are two possibilities here; one is that a hell of a lot of "people" actually like and enjoy his style (and get a lot out of his content) and therefore keep buying his products. (Despite there being a significant number of other PS authors around as alternatives.) The other is that the publishers keep pouring money into producing books that aren’t selling just to piss you off. If I had to put money on one of those options, I know which one it’d be.

As a purchaser of a couple of his books as well as his TT CS2 series, I find his style of humour less effective in writing than it is in the videos where his innate "personableness" really shines through. And yet even with that encumbrance, "people" keep buying the books, it would seem. Funny, that.

As for "getting on with it", you accuse Duncan of being a troll and never having seen the material that he’s commenting on; I’m wondering if you’ve seen any of Deke’s. Yes, he makes some lame (indeed, cheerfully and proudly lame) puns from time to time. However with the exception of the intros to each group of lessons in the TT CS2 series, which can be skipped by the humour-impaired, these are mostly in the nature of an aside. The vast, indeed overwhelming amount of the content is straight "this is what can be done, this is how you do it, and this is how to do it more easily" hands-on work.

Scot Kelby is the same way with Photoshop TV. He thinks he is so funny and cute and all he is a drag down for the show and serious people around him.

Can’t say that I’ve seen him. But like Deke, he may just be aiming at an audience which HAS a sense of humour.

As for training TT never had a strangle hold. They weren’t even the first ones. They are however the best. I have seen Lynda.com’s products and I can’t say I am impressed.

And again this comes back to the point that what they’ve had in the PAST may not be what they have in the FUTURE. In regard to their past products, and with the important qualification that this is based only on the samples I’ve seen, I probably agree with you. For example Paint Shop Pro X came with a large collection of Lynda QuickTime videos. Now they weren’t BAD… but nor were they, IMHO, exceptionally good. The presenter stuck her personality in neutral (which you may appreciate what with learning new skills being a Very Serious Business and all), but I found that it made the videos much more tedious. You could also tell that she was largely just reading a script from the hesitations and flatness of the presentation. Deke, on the other hand, certainly works from a script, but you can tell that he just uses it as a framework to hang his lessons from. Rather than a "talking from the lectern" experience (which was the feeling I got from the PSP X videos, or at least the ones that I watched before jumping to CS2), watching one of Deke’s lessons is like sitting down with the neighbourhood guru who’s giving you some "one on one" instruction. And there are more subtle things as well; things which probably escape notice unless someone’s really looking for them. McClelland seems to put a lot of effort into selecting his examples; he seems to pick ones which allow him to demonstrate various aspects of the features that he’s demonstrating. A less skilled presenter will just find the first picture that will allow them to cover the main points. This is something that’s part art, part skill and part experience. And again, it’s the skill and experience of the presenter / author, not of the production company.

Even if you leave the production quality and
distribution methods aside they just don’t cover the subjects very well. They seem to be more concerned with covering a little bit of everything instead of a couple things really well. They also charge too much for their stuff, considering the quality, distribution method, how the stuff is installed and used and how un in-depth it is.

The example CS3 clips on the Lynda site seem to have production quality every bit as good as the TT CS2 series. As for price… we’ll have to wait and see. As for distribution method… I don’t really want an on-line experience since I work unconnected a lot of the time, but it’s clear from Arnor’s post that other people have different wants. However the fact remains that you can still get the Lynda material on disk, just as you can get the TT courses, and I’m at a loss to see how there’s a difference in that respect. Indeed, by offering the streaming content as an alternative Lynda seems to have one up on TT for people who do want to do it that way. Aside from which, if I had my ‘druthers I prefer QuickTime over the format of TT’s ones anyway. One big advantage of the PSPX QuickTime .mov’s is that I could just launch the one that I wanted from Windows Explorer. Less muss, less fuss.

Put simply, my feeling is still that having McClelland in the fold is going to make a HELL of a lot of difference to the desirability of the Lynda CS3 course versus the desirability of the TT one. At least, for *MANY* people given on his popularity as demonstrated above. Your own personal mileage is entitled to vary, and if you don’t like McClelland’s stuff, hey, don’t buy it. I suspect that he’ll still have more than enough who will to keep bread on his table.

"Alan K." wrote in message

On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:30:09 -0800, "Little Juice Coupe" wrote:

So so for them. One problem with Deke is that like Jim Carry once you saw his comedy you saw everything he had.

Which unfortunately misses a rather relevant point… he’s not a comedian by trade. No-one buys his products purely for the entertainment value. They buy them because the guy knows his sh*t inside and out and has a way of cutting through and presenting a subject in a brilliantly accessible manner. The light-heartedness that he injects into it is merely the cherry on the cake (for those with a sense of humour at least), not the cake itself.

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 10:15:26 -0000, "Duncan"
wrote:

As good as TT are and for may part prefer it find the presentation a little too polished and much like watching the news.

The points being put across can also be overly longwinded and laboured and I frequently find I skip through minutes of tedious repetition becasue input errors and duplicated steps are not edited out. This is not only annoying but padding IMO to lengthen the play time.

Really? I hadn’t noticed any of that in Deke’s CS2 series. Which ones did you see?

If you cannot comment without abuse then who is what! This was a critique and a fair observation. It seems you may not have as may sets as I to make a similar critique.

I have 5 TT sets and what I was alluding to, was for example, in a Flash example it was shown how to make an animated button. I don’t need to see him create another four! Similarly in other TT sets you are shown a feature and the process could be valid to show it again for clarity. However to repeat the operation on a DVD is a waste of time as you can just review what you just watched. It’s called rewind!

Duncan

"Little Juice Coupe" wrote in message

I have never seen a TT product where they have left in glaring errors. Makes me wonder if you ever have seen their products. You come across more as a troll.

ljc

"Duncan" wrote in message

As good as TT are and for may part prefer it find the presentation a little too polished and much like watching the news.

The points being put across can also be overly longwinded and laboured and I frequently find I skip through minutes of tedious repetition becasue input errors and duplicated steps are not edited out. This is not only annoying but padding IMO to lengthen the play time.
I paid for content demonstration not duplication. I’d rather the key points were demonstrated directly and then shown in detail in a sub section.

With Lynda I find them a little thin of content.

Duncan

Hi Alan,

have to wait and see. As for distribution method… I don’t really want an on-line experience since I work unconnected a lot of the time, but it’s clear from Arnor’s post that other people have different wants. However the fact remains that you can still get the Lynda

I agree with your post, but just want to clarify that I would _like_ to get a CD/DVD, but with a choice of watching on-line for $25 for a month (which would cover an awful lot for me!) or paying $hundreds for a DVD, I will take the online course first. At later time I might buy the DVD set if I felt the urge. This way I can try it out for $25 along with a ton of other courses and I expect that I will pick some to purchase on DVD. I work from home and sit in front of the computer most of the time and have a fast DSL connection and the Lynda.com videos streamed perfectly for me. So did the TT examples. I didn’t really see much difference in the online stuff, but the advantage for me is that lynda.com offers subscription at fairly low rate where as TT seems to be DVDs only (I could not find information about subscription, so if there is a way to do this online with TT I apologise, I just couldn’t find it). We all have different needs and preferences when it comes to learning and from what _I_ saw, Deke’s training worked very well for me. I have been an instructor myself on a number of computer training courses back in the early ’90 (gosh, makes me feel sooo old<g>) and have also participated in a lot of training courses, both online and live. Some instructors put you to sleep in a hurry<g>, but I did not get that feeling from Deke.

—
Arnor Baldvinsson
San Antonio, Texas