Customer Reviews

Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sometimes, I think a lot of these books just slap a new cover on their publication and make minimal edits to the same recycled material. This book really does cover AE 7 in a complete way for beginners and beyond. I have been working in AE for a couple of years now and I also found it to be pretty handy for featuring the updates in AE7. IMHO, this is the best book of the series...I can think of at least 3 ways this book has changed my work habits. It is clear, logical and well laid out. The only way I wouldn't recommend it is to try to use it with older versions of AE...there really isn't much backward compatibility here. Emphasis is on how to use the newest features, especially the Adobe Bridge and the presets, which is why I recommend it to those who are just getting started in AE.

The exercises in this book are extremely practical, and fantastic for showing a beginner how to begin to do some powerful things with After Effects in a hands on approach. For that the book is excellent. I do also like the appropriate amount of repetition and clear screen shots as well as references to shortcuts. The lessons are well written and concise.

The two main drawbacks in my opinion, are:
1 - The content of the examples is very mediocre. It would be much more exciting to do a network packaging rather then "Channel 5 News" over a still image.

2 - The book assumes you will be using Adobe Bridge for many aspects, which isn't necessarily always the case.

Overall a very thorough beginners guide to After Effects, that should get anyone doing basic production work or making art right away.

I opened this book with 2 years experience in Final Cut Pro, Motion and just a cursory intro to After Effects so I can't speak to how a beginner would experience it. However, I have found that doing the hands-on tutorial has upped my skills in the program vastly. Last night I was able to begin a 3d project of a scope I could not have imagined doing a year ago. It is not the end-all be-all because no one book could cover all the nuances in a powerful program such as After Effects. But, that said, if you do the lessons, it will push your skills forward and that's what it's all about, right?

Actually this is about what I expected from Adobe. It's a basic instruction book for After Effects 7 that shows a beginner some of the mechanics of the program. The lessons pull the reader through the steps needed to produce the required results without much explanation.

As another reviewer noted, the examples aren't that good. Watching the sample movies before doing the lessons, you find yourself saying "And why would I want to produce something like that?" Or maybe "It takes over an hour just for that 10 second cheezy cartoon?"

After Effects is an extremely powerful program that's used by many professionals in countless video applications. Watch any TV program and you'll surely see the results of what After Effects can do. Much additional instruction beyond this official training book from Adobe, that you have to pay extra for, is obviously required to get the most out of After Effects.

I just got 2 more books,"After Effects" by Fahs & Weinman and "Creative After Effects" by Taylor. I'll see how they compare with Adobe's book.

Update: After reading "Creative After Effects" by Angie Taylor, this Adobe Classroom in a Book looks like a Pulitzer prize winner in comparison. Don't even think about wasting your time on Taylor's so-called "book".

I sat for a solid week trying to make sense out of the confusing owner's manual for After Effects, and never got anywhere. After just the first "lesson" in this book, I already knew my way around in AE smoothly, and then with each lesson, I was accelerating rapidly with knowledge. The official AE owner's manual will definitely be tossed into a dark corner for a long time.... this Classroom In A Book should be listed as a manditory requirement for learning how to use AE. It is very easy to understand and takes you through some very cool steps to help you create videos like the pros. Without this book, I would still have no clue as to how to function inside AE.....If you want to learn how to use AE in a flash, then you HAVE to buy this book!!!!! I recommend it 100%!!!!!

I have to agree with an earlier reviewer that indicated that this is not for beginners. I have 2 years of experience with video editing (Final Cut) and Photoshop CS/CS2, and the knowledge that using those tools gave me prepared me to use this book. I'm not sure that ideas such as layers, timelines, compositions, effects, etc. would have made sense to me without that prior knowledge.

That being said, this is a great book. I've made it to chapter 9 so far and am enjoying learning and looking forward to using these techniques with my video productions.

I have have AE Pro 6 on my editing pc for 2 years now. Using it for s few films i did. I found it very difficult to learn. Flash forward I upgrade to AE7 pro and love it! I got this book at the same time and its been my bible. Very easy to follow and great usable tutorials. I highly recommend this book for new AE users!

Learning After Effects on your own is like trying to get around in a foreign country on your own. It helps a great deal to learn the basics of using the interface and getting a better understanding of using a motion design program.

Since the new 7 version is different than the previous 6/6.5, it makes an easier transition for those who have to upgrade.

The only drawback of course are the examples which though helpful for learning, wouldn't work in a portfolio.

Overall, it is well the worth the price of the book to learn everything you would learn from an expert in person.

However, having access to a professional or two wouldn't hurt either. In fact, if you are serious, it is a MUST.

I recently made the financial plunge and bought Adobe's Production Studio Premium which includes After Effects 7.0 - a motion graphics and compositing program I feel necessary for any serious production company. Though quite good at Premiere Pro, and decent at Photoshop and 3ds Max, I did not know how to use After Effects at all so I bought a couple books to try to learn - this being one of them.

At first glance the lesson projects appear un-impressive, particularly if only looking at the pictures in the book. However, as you work through them and watch the finished videos you realize that you are learning valuable techniques and skills that you can apply to your own work. They have you import and work with photoshop, illustrator, and video files (included on DVD) so you get used to working with a variety of media just like in a production environment. The book really helps you step by step learn to work with this program in a variety of ways and is exactly what a new AE user needs.
It covers quite a bit of stuff including things new to version 7.
It's well worth the money and I recommend it to anyone who needs help getting started with this program.

I guess my only complaint was that it didn't do a lesson on some of the motion graphics like I see on national network commercials (loopy, ribbon, bubbly graphics) they always fling onto the screen, but to be fair this program can do so very much there's probably no way to have a book so inclusive that it goes from the very beginning to that level all in a single book. Also, the .mp3 file that you are supposed to use with the lesson 1 project will not import into my After Effects without crashing it.

In all fairness, I've only gone through the first lesson and already I'm enraged at Adobe. You're given several files to import from the accompanying DVD, and one of them is 3 seconds long. The book refers to it as 3 seconds long. Strugle struggle struggle and you can't make it work like the sample movie. Now I open up the adobe finished example and lo and behold, the file is supposed to be THIRTY seconds long. I have a little experience and was able to create a new file of approriate length but real beginners will tear their hair out over something like this. Problem 2- a supplied mp3 file won't load (though all my other mp3 files will). Had to convert it to wav to import it. These kinds of defects just shouldn't happen in a teach your-self environment.

Bottom line is at least the first lesson is not a lesson in how to use After Effects 7 but how to get totally frustrated. Can't wait to see lesson 2. If you are looking for a smooth, easy way to learn After Effects 7, look elsewhere.