Customer Reviews

Real World Adobe InDesign CS3

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I not only recommend this book to all my InDesign students but my own copy is always near at hand for quick reference on the more obscure topics. David and Olav cover everything, from how to open a panel to how to set up an XML workflow. Hundreds of clear illustrations present examples of what's being discussed, making it very easy to understand.

I'm a fan of their humor, too. Here's one example, from the chapter on variables; specifically the Last Page Number variable ("Page X of Y"):

----
Page X of Y. Ever wonder why so many financial and legal documents
use a page numbering scheme that tells you how many pages
there are in the document? For some documents, the simple knowledge
that *there is an end* is required to maintain one's sanity.
----

These little delights are found throughout the book.

Chapter headings (many subtopics under each head) are Workspace, Page Layout, Text, Type, Drawing, Where Text Meets Graphics, Importing and Exporting, Long Documents, Transforming, Color, Printing, Scripting, and XML.

In my early days of learning software (1991) I would always try to learn by doing. Most times, I stumbled enough to learn how a program works. That has changed. Today's software packages are filled with toolbars, ribbons, icons, and countless menu items that allow the user to accomplish more than she can imagine.

I have always wanted to learn a page layout/graphics program. After dabbling in Microsoft Publisher, I knew there had to be more. Enter InDesign - a program that provides the tools to produce professional results. All I need to do is learn how it works.

Real World InDesign CS3 is the book I need. With little experience, I have to learn from the beginning, yet not be treated like a third grader in art class. This book is very well written, extremely easy to follow, and, with the layout designed for finding topics quickly, allows the reader to discover the how and why of a task. I am now on my way to understanding this "I can produce most anything" software package. Scaling. leading, kerning - all new terms for me - are now in my vocabulary. This is a big book filled with relevant information about InDesign. Each chapter has a beginning and ending, unlike some books where the author just writes in a technical tone.

If you're like me - new to InDesign - get this book. If you're beyond beginner, get this book. It satisfies all manner of users.

In deference to the other excellent books available on InDesign CS3, Blatner and Kvern's latest update to this series proves once again that RWIDCS3 is the standard by which all others are measured. Written by two of the biggest ID brains around, this gigantic tome is not only jammed with everything and anything about InDesign, but is done so with a sly, dry wit and style that actually makes it fun to read. Bravissimo.

David Blatner is the best resource I know for InDesign questions. This is a great reference to find answers fast.

I can't say I enjoyed this book because all it did was confirm my suspicions that InDesign was still very seriously limited in many regards. Nevertheless, it is quite thorough in its description of all the application's various features as well as those features' various--often times baffling-- caveats and limitations. If I had one complaint about the content it would be that it jumps around a lot, making frequent references to sections the reader hasn't gotten to yet, but it's not that distracting.

What bothered me most was the cheapo binding which isn't really strong enough for a tome of this size. I've had it for less than a week and have subjected it to no substantial abuse beyond simply reading it normally and the spine is already cracking apart, allowing pages to sluff off and rejoin the ground that bore them. It seems like Peachpit gets cheaper and cheaper every year, yet their prices never falter.

This book gives comprehensive information covering all aspects of InDesign CS3. Helpful as a reference for learning specific functions. This book is required for a college class and it is useful.

From the start Mr. Kvern and Mr. Blatner try to present every which way a person can do something in InDesign, in paragraph form. I'm a technical writer with over 20 years experience and I appreciate the humor; a technical book is dry and its nice having an author put a little personality into a pretty boring task. However, there was a ton of personality in the book and it was quite cumbersome to have to read through a mountain of text (all good humor aside) to find the step-by-step instructions I was looking for, and I'm fairly comfortable with this application. Couple this with extremely poor copy and tech editing (that's the publishing house's fault) and this is a very difficult read.

For example, on page 38 they say, "To display InDesign's Preferences dialog box, choose General from the Preferences submenu (under the InDesign menu on the Macintosh, or the File menu in Windows), or press Command-K/Ctrl-K."

First of all Preferences is under the Edit menu in Windows (not sure about the Mac), not the File menu (I had to look in the Help files for that). Secondly, something along the lines of "Select the InDesign (Macintosh) or Edit (windows) menu, Preferences submenu, then General to display InDesign's Preferences dialog box." Or even better, break this out of the paragraph and put it into step-by-step instructions. And please gentlemen, put all the keyboard shortcuts in an appendix at the end of the book or in the sidebar.

Again, I appreciate the effort and writing that the authors obviously put into the book (two stars instead of one), but most of the book should be about using the software, not a David Letterman warm-up. If I would have been in a book store and looked through this book, I wouldn't have bought it. Adobe's out of the box documentation is better.

This is the only book I've found that has a whole section on creating indexes in InDesign. The section is very well written and very thorough. And there are quotes about indexing that are in my permanent file!

I bought this book because I needed quick and fast answers while rushing to finish a project! I was able to finish my project because I had my questions answered from reading this book. It was easy to understand.

This is the best, most thorough guide to InDesign CS3. Filled with tips and techniques--as well as real-world examples--this is the book that should have been in the box!