Customer Reviews

Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) 6.0 and Illustrator(R) 9.0 Advanced Classroom in a Book

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

 

 

This is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn how to use Illustrator and Photoshop together to produce complex graphics. The is an "advanced" Classroom In A Book, so you better know your tools and terminology before starting in on these exercises. But that just leaves more space for the multiple authors to demonstrate advanced techniques and ways to use and combine tools that may not seem obvious. The "sidebar" features provide great explanations of some of the more complicated features, such as Photoshop's knockout options for layer blending. As with all the Classroom In A Book titles, you are taken through the exercises step by step, in great detail. All the supporting image files are provided on the CD that comes with the book, in "before" and "after" formats, so you can go through the exercises over and over, and see the effects of each step as you work through the exercise. I noticed a couple of minor editing errors, probably made in the transition from the Photoshop 5/Illustrator 8 version of this book to the current version. (On p. 41 you are referred to a discussion on memory requirement on p. 2 - but there's no mention of memory on page 2). All in all, a very worthwhile investment for anyone wanting to get the most out of these two great software packages.

It's an okay book, but I think this is more of an intermediate book instead of advanced and was somewhat disappointing, although not entirely, it does have quite a few useful exercises, if anything I'm mostly disappointed because this book does'nt have enough lessons nor cover ALL the advanced features that they left out in the other Photoshop / Illustrator CIAB series. I would say buy this book if you have 30 bucks to spare for a little extra knowledge of PS/IL, but if you just want that PERFECT advanced photoshop book, you MUST buy Adobe Photoshop 6 Studio Techniques, which is also by the fine fellows at Adobe Press, otherwise it is pretty weak at covering advanced Adobe Illustrator.

This book seems to be missing about half of the functionality of these two applications. It does not flow well, and does not cover information for web developers. This is NOT one of the better reference materials produced by Adobe. You would do well not to waste your hard-earned money on this one.

Adobe is great- we all know that. They also make some pretty rockin books for their products. THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM!! This is why-I used the Photoshop 5.5 & Illustrator 8.0 book in school, and its great, so I thought I would buy the new version, and even if only one or two lessons were updated or changed to reflect the new abilities of the two programs, I would be happy. Sure enough-FOUR LESSONS HAVE JUST BEEN DELETED!! Not replaced with anything!!! So, those of you that have Photoshop 6.0 CIB are used to 17 lessons- buy this book and pay ($$$) for NINE!! The last version of this book is great, but I returned this one. I WAS ROBBED!

there are better books out there.

I really like the concept of what Adobe is doing in this book series. Yet, in Lessons on masking in lesson 4 and layering in Lesson 5 provided instructions that just did not work. This both surprised and obviously frustrated me. The other lessons worked fine - come on Adobe rework lessons 4 and 5 - you can do better than this!!!