I'm really new to Photoshop, too.  I have a friend who will sit and teach me, but he prefers it if I can do some learning on my own as well.  So I found this site:   www.trainingtools.com/online/photoshop6/index.htm    and have been slowly working my way through it.  It's for P/S6, but there may be one for 7, or this may get you started enough to get into it.  (And it's FREE, which I've always found to be a pretty good price!)

There are 13 chapters, and a good table of contents.  I've found it to be well laid out and easy to access.

It's VERY basic.  I'm not much of a techno-geek, so I found the first chapters to be pretty dull (I don't care how the program runs itself when I'm not looking), but I've found scads of  helpful bits of information that I've been able to use, have figured out how to do several things I couldn't do before, and was able to do some postwork on my latest image without getting any help from my friend!  

I tried opening a photo and messing about, but somehow my brain wasn't able to make the connections.  This tutorial bridged the gap for me.  

Tara

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."  ...  Robert Capa