I have PS CS4 Extended. I thought I could learn it on my own. Ha! Then came the endless stream of books that I either bought or brought home from work that I just knew would tell me everything if I stuck them on a shelf near the computer. I did make efforts to learn from the For Dummies book, the Visual QuickStart Guide and the 100 Essential How-to’s. These weren’t clicking for me–though I know plenty of people who swear by all of these series. Then I tried the Classroom in a Book, which I just LOVE. This book just tells you exactly what you need to know (what to click and when to click it and what should happen) and the authors make no attempts at being humorous. There’s an overview at the beginning of a lesson and a little quiz at the end. The best part is that the lessons take about an hour. I will bring that 100 Essentials back home when I know more, though. And I want to look at the Missing Manual too. There was some cool advanced tips in there.
The amount of publishing about Adobe products just kills me. Amazon says there’s lots more where all of these books came from: http://tinyurl.com/cdln6m There’s some great online tutorials out there too.  I’ve looked at lots and will make a list someday.  For now, though, the You Suck at Photoshop videos are fun and the content is good but I’m really serious about starting from the beginning of this software. I’m completely dying for somebody to give me money so I can subscribe to http://www.lynda.com/ They do a right fine tutorial. Hands down the best I’ve seen. Actually the price for the subscription isn’t that bad. One less pair of shoes for a year’s worth of learning.  Well!  So you can be impressed by my basic layers and layer effects prowess, here’s the postcard I made tonight.  Masks and Channels are next! Woooo!