Gary,
Just be aware that there are some typos, as well as some less than simple instructions in some of the exercises. There is a discussion at his site about them. If you already know PhotoShop, you should have no trouble. I had to read, re-read, re-re-read, write out, have my wife read to me, etc. And I still couldn't get things to work as I thought they should, turns out the editor didn't quite know what Mr. Lynch meant to say...very frustrating! Then I discovered that others had the same problem! Nice to know one is not as crazy as one feels sometimes!
The exercises are sometimes tedious, but the idea is to see what you can do manually (and hopefully understand what is happening as well as why) before allowing the user to perform the same task with his Hidden Tools. One key thing to remember, follow the steps EXACTLY, if you accidently select a different layer and then perform a step, you'll be completely lost (he says from experience! )
One thing I will say, I've yet to have Elements crash on me. I had to set up a limited extensions set to use Canvas! And it would sometimes still crash on a Save!
Jim C.