When I was a student, I used my student discount to help me purchase Adobe's Creative Studio 2 software. For years, I had heard about how great Photoshop was but I never had the money to buy it or the time to learn it. Instead I got things done for $100 with PaintShopPro (version 7 no less).

School was super busy so I never really had time to figure CS2 out or even to run the instruction video that came with it. Frankly, the whole thing always felt a little daunting. CS2 includes so many programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, Bridge, InDesign and Acrobat) that I wasnt even sure what they were all for.

But enough is enough. I popped that instruction DVD in my computer and resolved to learn CS2.

And my brain exploded!?!

Jesus, god in heaven!! This thing is he most complex software I have ever seen, it's INSANELY complicated! Even the so-called instruction video was complicated. (Frankly, the video is just a tour of changes to version 2 and nothing like an introduction to the products.)

"Option-click this tiny icon (that you hadnt even noticed before I clicked it)", "control D to open the window", "Just select this option from the 50 shown" - the little instructor guy certainly knows his stuff and I am sure he means well but this tutorial only proves to me how difficult these programs are.

I can see that the Adobe programs work together to provide a consistent workflow but wow, what a huge investment it is to learn the products. Just learning one of these products is a serious endeavor and not something I would want to do again or repeat with competitors products.

Once you have invested the time to learn CS2, I can see that your company would be locked in forever. I am bit surprised though that so many artist-types who dont consider themselves techies have taken the time to learn these product but you cannot argue with the output, which is beautiful to look at.

Not sure how many of them I will ever learn, but I am glad I finally took several hours to at least get an idea what the different products do. My next task is to try to use them myself. At least it will be after I deal with their onerous copy protection and product registration system which still wont let me access the "bonus" lessons in my free DVD :)