We thought about rating books, but a lot depends on how you learned. Instead, it is our belief that you won't get as much from a beginner's book as a harder one that makes you think.

One of our favorite books is Professional Photoshop 6: The Classic Guide to Color Correction, by Dan Margulis (which you can buy through Amazon.com for as little as $5). This remarkable book is not so much about Photoshop as it is about color. We would recommend it to anyone using any digital editing software in any version, beginner to advanced user. Although it aims at producing the best files for press work, if you print your art it's for you.

It seems to us, that learning is a curious and individual thing. If you have no reason to apply a technique, it will be hard to learn and retain it. Our experience in teaching is that people learn best what they have an immediate application for. We recommend browsing, browsing, and browsing. Some things seem obscure and difficult one time and a few months later if they fit a particular problem, the light goes on, and what was hard becomes easy.

Need to brush up on Photoshop? From version 7.0 through CS3—although even if you still using 6.0—you'll learn a lot from Russel Brown's Adobe Photoshop Tips & Techniques. Who can say it better than Mr. Brown himself: This is your one-stop shopping location for the latest in hot new tips from the one, and only, Dr. Brown. Beware, these QuickTime movies are large and will take time to download with a slow connection. These tutorials have been provided to you as a free service from Adobe Systems and Russell Brown. Even if you work at the expert level, you'll find something new!

Have you ever taken a Photoshop class or seminar? If you have, you know that feeling you get about three months later, "Now I understand why I need to do that, but, um, how did it work?" At $25 per month, Lynda.com provides some of the best and most comprehensive video instructions from beginner to expert levels, from Acrobat to Celsius. For that fee, you can review any and all of their videos, which are broken down into 1 to 20 minute segments. Curious? Here's the overall times for Photoshop: Photoshop Elements 43 hours, Photoshop 6 24 hours, Photoshop 7 23 hours, CS 56 hours, CS2 103 hours, CS3 146 hours. And you can go back over anything again and again.

Photoshop Restoration & Retouching, by Katrin Eismann. Katrin's approach differs from Dan Margulis, she likes masks and sharpening. You might say, "But I'm not a retoucher, and I don't restore pictures," but unless you accept the first version of every image you make, you are a retoucher. Okay, you might not need to remove dust or fix tears, but if you have to adjust a color, or move a little piece of something from a flattened group of layers, you're retouching.