personally, I've never read a manual for photoshop in my life. We had it at school, and I'd just use it every day. I basically learnt by going into it over and over again. If i saw someone do something "cool", I'd ask'em how they did it. I've been going at it for about 3 years and a bit now tho, and I guess I have a lot of patience (especially with a 380mhz computer!), which might not be ideal for you. There are some books in stores that to me look like good introductions, and will cover the tools in detail in terms of explanation. I sincerely doubt however that you'll find one that shows you how to recreate the Mona Lisa on the computer. Thing is, once you know what the tools do, its up to you to figure out different methods of applying them in conjunction with eachother in order to do what you want to do. take a look at Amazon.com as well, you might get a good deal.