Adobe Creative Suite 2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies(r) (Paperback)

by Jennifer Smith (Author), Christopher Smith (Author) "Adobe software has always been highly respected for creative design and development..." (more)
Key Phrases: second text frame, inspector palette, height text fields, Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Illustrator, Direct Selection (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Adobe software has always been highly respected for creative design and development. Its programs allow you to produce amazing designs and creations with ease, and with the release of the Adobe Creative Suite 2, you can design a wide range of productions ranging from illustrations and Web sites to professional documents and photographic manipulations.

Adobe Creative Suite 2 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies is your one-stop guide to creating great graphics with all the cool CS2 tools. Written in a thorough, fun way to show you the basics on how to use each of the programs, you’ll find out just how easy it is to start designing brilliant images and graphics. This guide gives you the tools you need to:

• Draw with InDesign
• Understand page layout and color
• Create colorful images with Illustrator C2
• Use the pen tool, type, and image placing
• Choose the correct Photoshop mode for your creation
• Create images on PhotoShop CS2 for print
• Paint and retouch images
• Create and secure PDF files with Acrobat 7.0
• Edit and extract text and graphics
• Build and publish a Web site with GoLive CS2
• Work with multimedia

Packed with easy-to-follow steps and guidance, you’ll be up to speed with all the features in no time. With these six great reference guides rolled into one, this is the ultimate book for becoming a CS2 pro!

From the Back Cover
6 books in 1—your key to success with CS2!

Your one-stop guide to creating great graphics with all the cool CS2 tools

They all work together, and now you have one guide to help you work with each of them! First, you'll get the "big picture" tour of the suite. Then you'll be ready to create perfect pages with InDesign, illustrate them with Illustrator, add images you've edited with Photoshop, make PDFs with Acrobat, and design dynamite Web sites with GoLive.

Discover how to

• Use common menus, palettes, and plug-ins
• Design Web pages and print publications
• Create illustrations and add type
• Retouch, enhance, and reshape photos
• Save Photoshop images for print or the Web

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Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 1st edition (July 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076458815X
• ISBN-13: 978-0764588150
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #313,286 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Overall View of the Whole Package, October 18, 2005

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is billed by the publisher as being '6 Books In 1.' At 768 pages, it's a big book. As you might expect, inside it is broken down into six books, one each on:

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Basics
InDesign CS2
Illustrator CS2
Photoshop CS2
Acrobat 7.0 (What happened to the CS2), and
GoLive CS2

As is common with the 'For Dummies' books, each of these independent books are in tutorial format. That is, they start with the installation and then do a series of 'do this', now 'do that,' commands. This is combined with a pretty good indexing system so that if you want to go back and look something up, you can. This makes the book useful as a reference later on.

Five of these books I'd say are entirely adequate. Book IV, on Photoshop, I'd say is a bit weak. That 'book' is about the same length as the other books in this volume. But the Photoshop software is so much bigger, so much more complex that I think you only get your toes wet in this volume.

My suggestion is that if you are going to use the whole Creative Suite 2 package that you get this book and then another one on Photoshop alone. And since I like the 'For Dummies' books, I'd probably get 'Photoshop CS2 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies' to go along with this book.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Common sense introduction to the software, August 24, 2006

By	Free Thinker "www.christandplato.blogspot.com" (USA) - See all my reviews

I bought this book to supplement the textbook I am using for a class in Adobe Illustrator. Personally I think this book should replace that confusing manual. Like mathematics textbooks, most software instructional materials make the same errors. They assume that the reader already has a foundational knowledge of the subject, they fail to describe techniques in a true step by step fashion, and they subtitute jargon for plain English.

This volume, like so many in the Dummies series, does a good job of assuming that the reader is a raw beginner and meeting him/her at that level, leading them through the basic knowledge of the skill or topic in a laid-back, understandable way.

This is especially helpful to those of us too old to have grown up with computers (I graduated high school in '84, just as the Apple 2E was coming out - what a machine! Dot Matrix term papers and endless games of "Pong")! Bravo to the authors and to the entire Dummies team. Highly recommended!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not really for beginners, September 3, 2006

By	S. Bohanon - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was a bit disappointed with this book. I followed many of the instructions to the tee as best as I could understand the "language" and it was difficult to follow. Not to mention, you had best know where all the tools are before embarking on the lessons. I can see this becoming a great reference book as I become more developed with CS2, but for a beginner I would not recommend it.