Hi, everyone.

I've just become a Creative Cloud subscriber. I used Final Cut Pro from versions 3 to 7, and also used Premiere Pro 1 along the way. I want to learn Premiere CS6 and After Effects. I've never properly learned Photoshop so I wouldn't mind dabbling in that as well if it's possible. I've always been the type who learns best from books rather than videos etc. I want technical and thorough explanations, nothing dumbed-down.

The Adobe website and Google are giving me bits and pieces instead of something holistic, structured and complete. I guess it's partly because CS6 is so new. I'm tempted by the ... classroom in a book series, since they were written by Adobe.

Are After Effects/Premiere/Photoshop sufficiently similar to CS5 that I can learn from a CS5 reference? And if so, what books would you recommend?

Richard

Personally I would recommend going to Lynda.com and watching the tutorials, skipping the books. For $30 per month (and you can quit anytime) you get access to all content there.

Lynda.com is good. Instead of getting a general course on the product it might make more sense to dive into a project you care about and as you hit features or techniques you're not familiar with yet then go to those two sources to find a tutorial on it. GL

Not forgetting "Videocoplot"

Not to pile on, or denigrate printed material (during which era is was raised), but also Adobe TV has a ton of FREE videos as well:

tv.adobe.com

In the past I did buy some books to learn various software and that never seemed to get me there. So I'm esentially self-taught, and the teaching was by reading the help, trying, reading the help, trying...

That sounds tedious, but it doesn't take long to understand how the software works when you actually use it.

Thanks to everyone who recommended lynda.com. I have signed up and I'm impressed by it.

I'll also sign up to the Adobe subscription so I can read their official books. I'm a bookish guy. I guess I'll have to get this first project out without their benefit though.

Richard

I have always found the Adobe Classrooms in a Book to be very good, although you do have to commit your time to follow the step by step lessons. Fortunately they indicate how long each lesson will last, so you can plan your time and go back over things if you don't understand a point.