Customer Reviews

Adobe Creative Suite Bible

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In addition to giving a great overview of how the six CS programs function independently, this book really shines in showing you how to work seamlessly between the various apps. The part on using CS with Microsoft Office files was worth the price of admission alone. This book is a great timesaver if you regularly work with several CS applications.

Kind of silly I suppose, expecting a single book to give a decent overview of all the aspects of te creative suite, but that's what I was hoping for. It's basically an introduction to the adobe creative suite, rather than a 'bible'. I have to say, I find it rather ineffective, trying to learn all these things at once, and the basic theme of the book, 'interconnectivity' is simple enough that you really don't need a book.
I'm also a bit bothered by how much they seem to want to sell the idea of the adobe creative suite. There is no mention of other tools available in places where they admit adobe's products have shortcomings.
Also, the paper is poor quality (what did I expect for the price?!).
That said, if you're looking for a generalist, get your feet wet kind of hand-holding book, this could be a good one to buy, the examples are clear and easy to follow.

This book is an overview of some of the most complicated software on the market. Photoshop alone deserves a book this large. There's no way the authors could hope to do much more than skim the surface of each of these powerful programs, so they focus on how they work together. As far as that goes, they're moderately successful. However, like Adobe Systems, they focus on a tiny segment of the market: graphics designers. They provide useful workflow ideas to independent graphics designers and to graphics studios. But those are hardly the only people who shell out nearly $1000 for Creative Suite. To read this book, one would think that nobody bought this suite in order to produce a book, technical manual, catalog, or anything else longer than a brochure or magazine. If you're looking for a way to get InDesign to behave like a grown-up publishing platform, get a book dedicated to InDesign and cross your fingers.

InDesign, as of CS 1, is still not in a class with Quark and Frame. Its major competitive edge over these workhorses of technical publishing is a) ease of integration with the other members of the "suite", which Padova, et al cover fairly well, and b) ease of use in importing MS Word files. But it still falls short in quintessential tasks such as heading numbering, list numbering, indexing and cross-referencing. However, if your document can live without these elements, InDesign's integration with deployment tools such as Acrobat and GoLive is extremely useful.

In short, consider carefully what you plan to produce before you shell out nearly fifty bucks for this book. If you're creating a book longer than, say fifty pages, with illustrations, tables of contents, numbered paragraphs, or an index, spend your money on a book devoted to InDesign. If all you need is a quick overview, refresher course, or an idea of how all these powerful programs work together, this book would be a good buy.