Customer Reviews

Adobe InDesign cs Bible

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Anything having to do with computers, I'm entirely self-taught (having done graduate work in the social sciences at a time when universities owned only mainframes that required punchcards . . .), but I'm also thoroughly autodidactic. So when I get involved with new software of any kind, I immediately go looking for the best big, fat reference book I can find. I've been using PageMaker for about eight years to produce the quarterly journal I edit for a learned society, but decided it was time to jump to a newer program. But the series of manual-replacements published by Osborne-McGraw-Hill and Hayden, with which I've been very pleased in the past, don't seem to include a volume for InDesign, so I asked around and Gruman's past work was heavily recommended. They were still right, I'm happy to say. The opening chapters provide the clearest description I've found yet of the differences between the PageMaker approach and the QuarkXpress approach, the chapter on styles is excellent, and the whole section on prepress and packaging is now filled with Post-It bookmarks. And so is Appendix D, "Switching from PageMaker." Gruman manages to clearly explain things on several levels at once, so both the muddler-through like me and the experienced graphics designer will be satisfied. And after I've taught myself the essential differences between the old and the new, the huge amount of pure reference material will keep this volume close at hand.

I have been working in the graphic design, layout, and web design industry for 13 years and was a die-hard PageMaker fan since pre-Adobe during the late Aldus years. I watched it grow and expand and I will never forget the excitement I felt when I found out that version 4.5 had been released and you could print in color separation! Wow, what a great concept!

Then I found out that PageMaker 7.0 was the end of the legacy and I felt as if my best friend was moving away to Siberia and was never going to return. Then I met the new girl on the block, InDesign, and all is better now. Although the first couple versions were chaotic and cumbersome at the least, "CS" has cleaned up and definitely taken a growth spurt for the better. Although it is still in it's puberty stages and is awkward to maneuver at times, it is by far one of the best programs I have worked with.

As I sat down and started my first layout project with InDesign CS, an 84 page booklet, I felt much like I did that first few days home with a new baby. You should know how to do this but know matter how many you have, they are each so different in their own ways that it takes awhile to get used to their little idiosyncrasies. Although there is endless "how-to" books out there on the market, I knew what I needed ... A Bible!

The Bible was able to walk me through everything from setting up my paragraph and character styles, saving my own unique workstations, hyperlinks, anchor points and bookmarks, and getting it easily saved to pdf format. My job requires me to utilize a program such as InDesign in a huge variety of ways, sometimes for simple layouts, like brochures, posters, etc.. and sometimes for more complex layouts that will be going to a professional printing shop or possibly need to be created to be viewed by either print or pdf format. This is one area that Page Maker fell very short in and InDesign ROCKS!

The Bible does a fantastic job of covering each of these unique needs and requirements of the user in a easy-to-understand format and encompassing all possible problems, where you were previously a PageMaker user or a Quark user. I really appreciated the tips and notes on the side and how to transition yourself painlessly from one application into the next generation, InDesign.

In just the short month that I have had a copy of the InDesign CS Bible I have filled it with post-it notes, highlighter ink, and just a few coffee stains. My advice would be if you are about to sit down and do ANYTHING with InDesign, whether you're doing your first layout in your life or you're a seasoned pro, go buy this book because you will use it as regular as the Pope uses his Holy Bible!

My page layout experience starts back in 1996 with PageMaker. Back then; I had to install about ten 3.5" floppy disks on my old Mac. I think the name Aldus was also on the disks. Anyway, I've been using PageMaker until my recent purchase of the Adobe Creative Suite Premium Edition, which includes Adobe InDesign CS. Now that I have my hands on a copy of the Adobe InDesign CS Bible, I can start learning to use InDesign. This book is definitely as thick as the Bible. It has 938 pages chock-full of Adobe InDesign CS information. The author says, "My goal is to guide you each step of the way through the publishing process, showing you how to make Adobe InDesign CS-also known as InDesign 3-work for you." Throughout the book you'll find icons in the margins indicating various types of information such as: Cross-Reference, New Feature, Tip, Note, Caution, Platform Difference, and QuarkXPress User. Before you start Chapter 1, there is a QuickStart Chapter. This QuickStart Chapter is intended for novices like me. It's a brief look at the basics. I quickly created a document and worked with frames, text, lines, pictures, colors, and then printed my newly created document. This QuickStart Chapter got my page layout juices flowing. As you may know, InDesign is a high-end program. If you're a beginner like me, you'll want to read this book chapter by chapter. Part I Welcome to InDesign consists of Chapter 1 What InDesign Can Do for You, Chapter 2 A Tour of InDesign, and Chapter 3 Getting InDesign Ready to Go. These chapters are vital to becoming familiar with InDesign and what it can do. Chapter 19 Creating Special Text Formatting was very interesting. This chapter covered some very professional looking text formatting such as creating automatic drop caps, formatting fractions, and hanging punctuation. I've always wondered how these things were accomplished. Now I know how and InDesign makes it easy. I can't imagine trying to do this stuff in a word program, if it can even be done. Okay, the one thing I've always wanted to do in my family newsletter is to create a picture-in-text effect. The InDesign Bible showed me how to turn my text into a graphics frame. Part IX: Introduction to Publishing was an outstanding edition to this book. It was these sixty pages that helped me gain a much better understanding of the environment in which most people use InDesign. All in all, this is a great book; however, reading this book didn't make me a professional typographer or a page layout expert. It has helped me to start using InDesign in much more of a capacity than I realized I would be able to. Since Adobe isn't going to continue to upgrade PageMaker, InDesign was the next logical step. I know, it's expensive, but if you have Photoshop you can upgrade to the Adobe Suite, which gets you InDesign. Then you'll need to get this book and you'll be on your way to creating some amazing page layouts.

Big book and a bargain at any price. Truely covers everything there is to know about InDesign CS - I've since upgraded to CS4, but still use this book as a reference.

I have been in the publishing business for more years than I will admit. My first exposure to desktop publishing was back in the late 1980s when I used a program called SuperPage. Over the years, I moved up to QuarkXpress and then to InDesign. Although I am not a power user, nor do I earn my living as a graphic designer, my work does require me to use the product on a regular basis. In order to increase my skills with the software, I purchased this book to better learn its functions, with particular emphasis on preparing documents for conventional printing as well as web publishing. I found each section of the book to be very detailed, clearly written, and with more than sufficient explanations of the many functions within the software. As a result, I can now easily create the documents I need and only have to refer to the book occasionally. I strongly recommend this book as an excellent way to learn the complexities of the powerful InDesign software. However, before committing a file for final printing, I urge you to speak to your printer or web hosting service to be sure that what you have done meets their specifications and requirements. Don't make the assumption, as I did, that your outside vendor wants the output files submitted the way the book suggests. Other than that, the time you spend teaching yourself the software will be time well spent.

Another great product from Adobe and the book does a very good job helping my students work with the program.

As the author of the InDesign CS Bible, I'm obviously proud of the book. But there's even more information available to supplement the book at http://www.indesigncentral.com, including some chapter updates for Indesign and Mac OS X changes that occurred after the book went to press. --Galen Gruman

I knew this book had serious problems when, as early as page 7, the author stated "Select the Content tool (the hand), then click in the new frame to hold the story's headline. Type the words..."

In the Tool Window, there are two hand-icons. The first one, an icon with a hand over it, reads "button tool." One cannot click on the button tool, click on a frame, and type text. The second icon resembling a hand is not called the content tool, but the "Hand Tool." Even so, clicking on the hand tool, and immediately clicking on a frame, does not allow one to type text. What "hand" is the author talking about?

I did a search on the InDesign Help website for "content tool" and there were *zero* finds. Even in the index of this 900 page book there was no reference to Content tool (under content *or* tool, the two most logical places to look) But yet, there on page 7, the author clearly states "select the Content tool."

Another error on pages 5-7. The authors' X and Y coordinates do not match up with the figures in the book. If you open InDesign and type 4p6 for X and Y, the frame is no where near where it appears in the book's figures.

One major error and one major omission -- all by page 7. I recommend printing off the tutorial/help that comes with the application instead of purchasing this book. It will save you a lot of time and frustration.