Learning Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator
 

These 4 are part of Adobe's Digital Video products. I have all 4 and have been desperately trying to learn them. So far I'm doing okay considering I just started a week ago. But I think there is only so much I can learn by myself.

I have a couple of options I'm debating. I was looking at classes and the Adobe Digital Video Certificatin track actually looks interesting to me...but of course it's pricey. Has anybody ever taken this track before or is actually an Adobe Certified Expert?
What can you do with that certificatin anyway? How valuable is that in the real world?

The other option I was debating was just buying books. I browsed around and they have those Classroom in a Book series. Anybody use these books before or have any recommendations on great books to buy specifically for the above 4 products I mention?

Try LearnKey
 

LearnKey has a series of CDs that are very, very good. I have used the ones for version 5.5 and I could drive PS after that.

They are a bit pricey, so check on classes in your area as they may be better.

Nathan Gifford

I've gone through the Premiere and AE Classroom books. They are a good way to get the fundamentals with some details about aspects that the authors feel are important. They are NOT an end-to-end tutorial. You still end up having a good bit of the product that you haven't touched yet. Much of what they have you do is by rote without any details.

All-in-all though I'd say they lay a good foundation for preparing you for either taking advanced classes or just jumping in and teaching yourself.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Bruce

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Learning all 4 at the same time sounds pretty insane! My personal opinion would be to learn them in this order. Photoshop, Premiere, Aftereffects, Illustrator. You can edit almost anything using Photoshop and Premiere. Aftereffects takes it another step farther than that. I hardly ever use Illustrator. (not that i wont in the future).

Thanks for the tips. I ended up getting the Premiere Classroom in a Book to start with. I went through the tour and the first lesson and the tour actually took me a long time...because after trying to make my output match their final version...I realized that there must have been some misprints in the text. Cause I got mine to look exactly like theirs but some of the timing was off. Like at one portion they say cut a clip at 8:01 but it actually turned out to be 7:01.

Anyway, I'm thinking about going in this order: Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects, and then Illustrator. I already have the Photoshop classroom in a book on CD which I copied from somebody. So After finishing Premiere CIB, I might as well go to Photoshop. For After Effects, I want to get a lot of information there. So i looked around and was thinking about getting the book entitled, "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects", by Trish Meyer and Chris Meyer. There is a companion book also. But this one looks really good with a lot of detail. I see myself 'fooling' around with premiere and photoshop after getting most of the fundamentals down...but I really want to get a lot of info for After Effects. Anybody heard or have read the After Effects book I'm refering to?

I bought both the "After Effects Classroom In A Book" -and- "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects"

I found the AECIB book dry. It felt like I could have done just as well with the After Effects manual.

"Creating Motion Graphics" book, on the other hand is stellar. I've paged through lots of varying types of computer books on various subjects, but I've found this one to be the most engrossing. The color illustrations bring more clarity than AECIB's black and whites. CMG's numerous sidebars are also very helpful in filling in the missing Why's and How's. I've recently finished my way towards the end of this book and have started on the wealth of ADDITIONAL material on the CD-ROM. These bonus PDF tutorials put into action what the book teaches.

I just started on their follow-up book "After Effects in Production". The structure here is similar to the Bonus PDFs from the CMG companion disc, but at a deeper level showing how the "pros" do it. After two chapters, it's clear I'll have my nose buried in it from end-to-end as well. Definitely recommended:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578200776/cartertg-20

Everyone's itemizing their learning books as a tax write-off, right? ;-)

"Creating Motion Graphics" is the best book for any computer program i have ever read. You will love learning AfterEffects with that book. Its just great!

Just a note. Learning to master AfterEffects will take as long as all other 3 programs combined. (just my opinion)

Photshop
 

I learned photoshop last summer with the "Photoshop bible" by Deke McClelland. Nice, witty style of writing and lots of info. If you're able to learn from a book, I think you'll like this one.

I also took a class at New Horizons learning center here in Michigan, and that helped fill in some of the gaps.

Good luck!