Adobe Creative Suite 2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies(r)

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Customer Reviews:

An Overall View of the Whole Package [Posted on 2005-10-19]
This book is billed by the publisher as being '6 Books In 1.' At 768 pages, it's a big book. As you might expect, inside it is broken down into six books, one each on:

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Basics
InDesign CS2
Illustrator CS2
Photoshop CS2
Acrobat 7.0 (What happened to the CS2), and
GoLive CS2

As is common with the 'For Dummies' books, each of these independent books are in tutorial format. That is, they start with the installation and then do a series of 'do this', now 'do that,' commands. This is combined with a pretty good indexing system so that if you want to go back and look something up, you can. This makes the book useful as a reference later on.

Five of these books I'd say are entirely adequate. Book IV, on Photoshop, I'd say is a bit weak. That 'book' is about the same length as the other books in this volume. But the Photoshop software is so much bigger, so much more complex that I think you only get your toes wet in this volume.

My suggestion is that if you are going to use the whole Creative Suite 2 package that you get this book and then another one on Photoshop alone. And since I like the 'For Dummies' books, I'd probably get 'Photoshop CS2 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies' to go along with this book.

Mostly satisfied- despite dissapointing performance by Amazon. [Posted on 2006-06-06]
First things first: This Ebook is not compatible with any handheld device. After many a wasted hour trying to get the ebook to work on a Palm, I called the publisher, who informed me that PDA features were blocked on this book. It took me several emails to finally get Amazon to acknowledge that the book was not "Handheld Compatible". Months later they still have not corrected the website, so I am left to assume they really don't care.

Part two: Why I did not demand a refund.
This is a reasonably informative book, with lots of good tips. The ebook format works well, and looks good on my Mac. Also, the ebook format is ideal for a computer manual, because you can jump back and forth between creative suite and the ebook, easily practicing what you learn.

This book has its shortcomings. There are some important topics that the book does not even mention. (like pathfinder and compound shapes in illustrator) Also sometimes the authors need to be a little more consistent in the names they use for tools and menus.

The book is good for discovering new things you did not know existed. I picked up many valuable hints I would not even have thought to look for. As a topic by topic reference however, the built in help that adobe supplies when you purchase creative suite is far superior to this book.

Common sense introduction to the software [Posted on 2006-08-25]
I bought this book to supplement the textbook I am using for a class in Adobe Illustrator. Personally I think this book should replace that confusing manual. Like mathematics textbooks, most software instructional materials make the same errors. They assume that the reader already has a foundational knowledge of the subject, they fail to describe techniques in a true step by step fashion, and they subtitute jargon for plain English.

This volume, like so many in the Dummies series, does a good job of assuming that the reader is a raw beginner and meeting him/her at that level, leading them through the basic knowledge of the skill or topic in a laid-back, understandable way.

This is especially helpful to those of us too old to have grown up with computers (I graduated high school in '84, just as the Apple 2E was coming out - what a machine! Dot Matrix term papers and endless games of "Pong")! Bravo to the authors and to the entire Dummies team. Highly recommended!

Not really for beginners [Posted on 2006-09-03]
I was a bit disappointed with this book. I followed many of the instructions to the tee as best as I could understand the "language" and it was difficult to follow. Not to mention, you had best know where all the tools are before embarking on the lessons. I can see this becoming a great reference book as I become more developed with CS2, but for a beginner I would not recommend it.

Great Book [Posted on 2007-03-15]
I needed this. Before spending hundreds of dollars on software and classes to learn the software. Get this book! It really helps you learn what each Adobe product can do.

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