Customer Reviews

Adobe(R) PageMaker(R) 6.5 Classroom in a Book (Classroom in a Book (Adobe))

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

 

 

In this book, the acual Adobe team teaches you how to use the powerful program, Pagemaker. You really retain what they teach you because you yourself are doing the projects. You learn in the context of the lesson. You learn the basics, like text editing, and move up to trapping and other cool stuff. I am only a high school student laying out his school's newspaper on PageMaker, and though I knew a little PageMaker, this book really shows you information even an advanced graphical designer would not know.

GOOD WORK, ADOBE! Now if only I could say that about InDesign... never mind!

I had never used PageMaker or any software like it and this book made me very comfortable with basic PageMaker features. I had trouble using the fonts included on the book's CD and wished for troubleshooting information about that but otherwise I had no trouble with the lessons.

I am an advanced Pagemaker designer and I recently was assigned to train coworkers in its usage. I was able to teach them with the help of this book in two days!! I wish I had learned from this book -- it would have saved many, many hours of my time.

I am a newbie to the wonderful world of desktop publishing and was charged with the task of putting together the newsletter for my state professional organization. The graphics arts department at my local printer wanted me to use Pagemaker Plus 6.5, since that is the software they use. This single book gave me the information I needed to do the complete newsletter.

In a number of one hour lessons, the Adobe team literally walks you through each step in putting together quality print projects. The book's learning style is "learn by doing." In each lesson, when you get to a step that introduces a new concept, there is some instructional text. Otherwise, you move rapidly, step-by-step, to create a real-life print project.

Furthermore, all of the clip-art, text, and fonts are on the CD-ROM that is included with the book.

I was so impressed with this book, I purchased the Adobe Press book entitled, "Adobe PhotoShop 6.0 Classroom in a Book." I also found it to be excellent. Both of these software titles are particularly difficult to just open and go, like so many of the Microsoft titles are. A book like this one is a MUST for anyone with a windows background who needs to learn these titles.

Happy Reading!

Jim

This book taught me the program, period. After reading it, I knew everything I needed to know to feel confident and explore the program creatively. I lent the book to several friends and they became proficient with the program, too. This book is more than a "how-to" manual...it's a professional course in graphic design. Anyone starting out with Pagemaker should buy this book before they even install the program!

Lessons one through seven include Windows conversions pretty well. The last three lessons are not written so Windows users can achieve the proper results.

This book takes you, step by step, through PageMaker very intelligently and intuitively. I'm a computer moron. If I can go through this book, anyone can!

One thing I've learned though, that should serve as a word of warning, especially to those who only know enough to be dangerous: go through the steps, especially the introductory steps, without skipping any. Everything you'll read builds upon what you did previously, so if you skip any steps, you'll regret it!! But as long as you don't skip anything, you'll be golden.

I was looking for a true tutorial--hold my hand, step-by-step, from beginning skills to advanced skills. This book is not that. It is good, but it assumes that you already kind of know the basics of PageMaker. The first lesson has you make a flyer, but it just says "do this" "do this". Maybe what I need is a manual!

This is the kind of book you use if you have time to go through all of the tutorials in order- I use it in a specific Pagemaker class and we go through the Lessons 1 at a time. I wouldn't recommend this as a reference book though- as something to look up specific things and how to do them one at a time.
I do have to say, this book is pretty borning, dryly written and doesn't touch on a lot of the more creative ways Pagemaker can be used. A book called Adobe Pagemaker Basics is a good companion to this, with info on color and drawing in Pagemaker. It's hard to sit and read this book straight through and not want to eat your head. You'd need a lot of discipline and motivation to get through this outside of a class. Rather than being a classroom in a book I'd call this a "book for a classroom".

I have found portions of this book useful. I am very disappointed with the lesson files. Several chapters will not allow you to use the Word® files in the lesson folders due to error "Filter not Found" Did anyone test these lessons after publication? I would like either my money back or corrected lesson files to complete the book.