Photoshop Courses

[Whatever]

Guys,

I'm looking at a doing a couple of courses to get a feel for Photoshop as we want to be able to do our own in-house images for our website and marketing flyers.

I've found a local college who do an introduction and intermediate course but don't give much away about what they cover but has anyone any experience of this type of learning? These courses are 1 day each which makes me wonder how much they can actually cover and are only £135 each so not a lot lost if they're crap.

I have a feel for what I want to be able to achieve with PS, not super designs like some of you designers on here but enough to make a banner ad or promotion for the website.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Paul

[samhs]

It really depends on how lucky you get Paul; how experienced the tutor is, what they feel comfortable teaching, and who else is in your class. I teach similar type courses at my local college, and some are tailored to the individuals attending - i.e. the course is limited to 5 or 6 participants and the course material is designed to give a grounding then meet their own specific needs. These tend to be 10 x 2 hour sessions though, and cost a fair bit more to the learner than £135. They're also the worst sort of course to teach because you have to be able to design a course programme on the fly, respond to questions without preparation (no good if you don't 100% know the software/material) and deal with users at different ability levels simultaneously.

A one day Photoshop course will likely only ever get you to a basic level, but have you considered something like kelbytraining.com or lynda.com? I can provide affiliate links to either/both (maybe I think?!) if you're interested in those - you'll get access to online videos from beginner to advanced for a similar kind of price - £135 for 12 months or so (I'm guessing a bit here). Other possibilities include VLC, Talented Pixie and loads more I can't think of just now.

HTH

[Whatever]

Thanks Sam.

Update is that I decided to call Business Link and ask if there was any grants/funding available and it turns out that as we pay our rates to Cheltenham Borough Council, they will give us upto £500 grant for training for anything we want and where ever we want so i've looked at a proper course for an Introduction to Photoshop CS4. The two I've looked at are both Adobe certified and well within the budget.

Certitec (http://www.certitec.com/training/photoshop/photoshopintroductionscheduled.asp) have offered the course in the link for £299 + VAT and it's only 45 minutes away from home and the other I looked at was Media Training (http://www.mediatraining.ltd.uk/courses/detail.asp?CourseAbbrev=photoshop-cs4-intro&CourseID=552) in London.

I might as well take advantage of the grant, nothing to lose.

[samhs]

I've been on a course to Media Training a long time ago - maybe 10 years or so - it was good - they tailored it to what our employer wanted us to cover (3 of us went down). They did a nice lunch too.

[Whatever]

I was leaning towards them too but the other one is only by Newport so meaning I could travel each day which saves hotel and parking costs.

The lead instructor of the Newport provider called me the other day at 6pm to talk through the course which was good of him so a little undecided. He did say we should cover most of what I want, which is really simple stuff like creating shapes and basic images to update our website, maybe a little bit of printed material for marketing offline. The biggest issue is the course is decide by the provider so there's no set syllabus to compare them.