Customer Reviews

Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional Classroom in a Book

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

 

 

I have only begun working on the 1st 2 lessons. I have done the 1st one several times. It isn't that the book doens't have good information its just that it is often difficult to follow exactly what the writers are telling you to do. The lessons themselves are pretty basic and helpful. I just wish they could be a bit more specific so that I am not having to figure out what layers or project selection I am supposed to make. I have had the same problem with both lesson 1 and 2. I think a DVD lesson would have been better so that there would have been nothing left out of the details. Once you figure out what the writer wants you to select, the book isn't bad.

I am totally unfamiliar with Adobe After Effects and based upon the title and experience with other Adobe Classroom in a Book titles, thought this would bring me gently into the After Effects universe.

Wrong. Totally wrong.

Rather than provide an overview of what After Effects does or is capable of, the book states "Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional provides a comprehensive set of 2D and 3D tools for compositing, animation and effects that motion-graphics professionals, visual effects artists, web designers and film and video professionals need. After Effects is widely used for digital post-production of film, video, DVD, and the web. You can compositer layers in various ways, apply and combine sophisticated visual and audio effects, and animate both objects and effects." That's it. That's the whole introduction to After Effects. Hardly illuminating and certainly not helpful to the neophyte.

The authors promises to teach the newcomer fundamental concepts and features - and it dispenses with that mission in a few inadequate pages.

Then it is on to learning the new features of After Effects CS3, which is what this book is all about.

But even that is not done well. Take for example these informative sentences: "You can pucker a shape by pulling the path's vertices inward while curving segments outward." There are no explanatory illustrations.

The lessons are nothing more than instruction lists with little explanation of what you are doing or why. The back cover declares "The fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional". I don't think so. Not by a long shot.

Overall, a disappointment and not the way for a beginner to learn about the capabilities of After Effects.

Jerry

I had to buy this book for school.It's full of lessons you follow along with, using art and graphics provided on a CD. As far as reference or help with your own projects, forget it. Your better off googling your question. If following along is all you need then, it's a nice book. The puppet stuff is OK. That helped a bit in learing it.
I had a question about nesting, they said it was pg 19. They just tell you what it is, not how to do it. ( Creativecow.com had a video explaining it)
I would not recommend this book.

I found the book hard to understand and somewhat disjointed unlike Adobe Premiere CS3 in a book which is excellent. But the author of this book leave much to be desired. Hard to follow and leaves out important info.

This book is very well put together. The writing is clear and the instructions well documented. I'm very happy with the purchase.

Great book! it can help to any beginner who wish to learn basics and some advanced features of making videos

$36 plus shipping. I am glad this is tax deductable for me. Chapter 1: After my 4th attempt, I'm giving up and will look for a diffent path to learning AE. Two errors in Chapter 1. Example:#7 "Right-Click the keyframe at 1:00, and choose Keyframe Assistat>Easy Ease In. I have approached this from many different ways. So far I have had nothing but the "Easy Ease In" being grayed and not active. I have gone back over the entire lesson with a friend reading each step and confirming each change. Adobe makes fine software that I have been using for over 20 years. I would advise them to review this and other how-to books in the series, until they do so, don't buy it.

Each chapter of this book is supposed to teach the reader the concepts and work flow to complete an After Effects project using assets from the companion CD. I'm on the third chapter and so far I have not been able to reproduce any of the projects by simply following the given instructions because in each of them the authors have failed to include critical information. This seems to be due to sloppiness rather than any planned teaching technique. Perhaps the software has changed due to updates but I've found that the screen shots in the book don't always match what I see on the monitor. The 80% to 90% of each project that does work as expected does provide a valuable learning experience and the other 10% to 20% is possible to figure out, but overall the experience is unnecessarily confusing and frustrating. This is my first experience with the Adobe Classroom in a Book series and it will be my last.

Overall it's a good book for learning after effects, the lessons and included cd are very helpful. I've noticed a few typos and what seemed to be a missing picture, so possibly the editing wasn't up to par, but even with the mistakes it been pretty good for learning the program.

If you want to learn about this Program, Get sure that this book has his DVD. Because it's amazing.