Adobe Indesign CS6 Classroom in a Book: The Official Training Workbook from Adobe Systems

Buckle your seat belt, this is going to be long. About me: I am a mostly self-taught graphics manipulator that primarily used open source and free software before finding Creative Cloud. My biggest aversions to Adobe products in the past was the expense and the learning curve. This book GREATLY erases the second concern and I plan to purchase the rest in the series for CS6 after I'm finished! (Creative Cloud took away the first concern about the price of the creative suite software). If you've ever watched a Youtube video to learn how to do something with an image, this book is perfect for you. It really is a step-by-step guide for anyone new to InDesign, and graphics and page layout. For example, one of the tips in Chapter 3 explains how a placeholder frame with an x in it is traditionally used for graphics frames rather than text frames. It might feel like the classroom in a book is insulting your intelligence if you have used previous versions of InDesign. I don't know for sure as I have never used InDesign until yesterday (I'm on Chapter 4); I mostly used openoffice to export to PDF but the scope of my newest project of making a digital magazine made me look for a software title like InDesign where I could make what I call templates and they call masters. Each chapter is a tutorial in itself and the files you use as the examples are available even if you buy the Kindle version (which I did). I am reading it on my Kindle Fire as I'm working through the book on my laptop which is working well. I especially love that when there is an unfamiliar publishing term (like gutter, bleed, or pica) I can highlight, see the full definition and find out what it means exactly as my jargon is rusty. I like using the Fire to read the manual so I do not have to switch back and forth between screens on my laptop like I would with other tutorials. Before this project, the only layout experience I had was high school yearbook and limited exposure when I wrote for my college newspaper, all 10+ years ago. The tutorials in Classroom in a Book have clear written instructions but also visual aids for the step you are on with screen shots. It also has an overview for each mini-section inside of a chapter or lesson, review questions and the answers. I love the overview at the beginning of the mini-sections (what I'm calling the sections between each Save the File instruction when it feels you've reached a major point)! I'm a figure-it-out kind of learner, so as I progress in a chapter, I find myself reading the overview and seeing if I can accomplish it without needing the step-by-step guide. Then I use the step-by-step part to check my work! It does not have a section about general publication design, but I think that's outside the scope of this book since there is so much one can do with InDesign. I want to make a digital magazine, but another buyer might just want to make holiday cards for family and scrapbook pages for a website or a travel brochure. If you are new to design in general, I'd recommend reading about planning out the type of project you are working on. For example, for my magazine, I know to make a paper and pen sketch of the pages in the order I want them (where there's an ad, an article, the masthead etc.) and to have the pieces ready when I'm ready to start making the publication. This is classic work flow for publications, a lot like quilting but with deadlines and lots of coffee. The hardest part I'm having with the software is thinking in picas. From my web experience and other image manipulation projects, I think in pixels, and I'm still a little foggy on the conversion. If you are looking for a viable replacement of a class teaching InDesign, I would absolutely buy this book. I've already gifted two copies to the people who will be helping me with my magazine. And, if you are struggling with the lack of interactivity, I suggest you check out tv.adobe.com and watch a few videos on InDesign so you can "see" someone interact with the software much like an instructor would on the Smartboard or other interface in a college class. I did this before I found this book and was filling notebooks with the steps I was seeing and then trying them out on dummy projects. This book makes that process much easier! But watching the videos still helped me nail down the way the software interacts with you when you right click etc. I am very thankful this series is here and I don't have to pay for an expensive class to learn the basics that would have been easily ten or more times the cost of the Kindle version. So thank you, Adobe!

I recently upgrade from Adobe CS2 to CS6. So much has changed since CS2 that I had to practically start over again learning all the software. I bought almost all the CS6 Web and Print books. I found this one to be the best. I hated the CIB Dreamweaver book but this one was well written and stepped me through just about everything. I was completely up to speed with CS6 after reading this book. However, Adobe has a great training site and you can download lessons for free. This is a great book to teach you InDesign as it steps you through how to use everything but if you don't want to spend the money, go to Adobe's site for free tutorials you can download and print out. What I don't like about the Classroom in the Book series these days (I have been using Adobe software for over two decades and buy a CIB book every few upgrades when things change drastically) is that they don't treat you like a beginner. They assume you should have used the software at some point already. I think a beginner can still do well with this book though. I have looked at many other software books over the years and find the Classroom in a Book series to still be the best.

I got the kindle version of the book because it was the cheapest I could find for my college class. Props to amazon for an easy download process. The display of the pages are very nicely put together, and adobe always makes easy to follow lessons and walks you through everything. Definitely have no complaint about the book itself, but there is two problems that make the e-book a bit of a hassle. There are no correct page numbers to tell you where you are. So when my teacher tells me to do a lesson in certain pages, I don't know which ones she means, because in the print book it would be 57, but in the ebook its page 1212. I'm a bit new to using ebooks, but I have not found any means to fix this problem so it leaves me in the dark and trying to find and assume which lessons I am supposed to do. My teacher answers emails once every two weeks maybe, and it's a fully online class so there's no way to just ask easily and still turn my assignments in on time. Also the download file link for the lessons is broken and only leads to a 404 page. After some internet searching, I found the files but it was a bit of a hassle considering the links aren't remotely similar to each other at all except for the site that their on. It is an excellent book, but I just want to give fair warning to those who purchase the ebook version of the trouble they may have to go through. Edit 4/16/2013: They have since fixed the link to download materials for the program, so I bumped the rating to 4 stars. That was the biggest problem with the book, glad they fixed it. :)

Been using this for a few weeks now and find it very easy to use. It comes with a CD with two lesson files for each chapter: a starting and ending point. You can 'work' on the starting point and follow along and perform each task in a particular chapter. Depending on your experiene with Adobe products you don't necessarily have to do each chapter or follow in order, although that would be best if you are new to it. I like that you can refer to the table of contents and index if you want to learn a particular skill and go right to it. Well written and clear. This book makes it easy to learn this amazingly powerful program.

I am not new to InDesign. I have been using ID CS2 for some years to format a monthly on-line column. Before that I taught the predecessor program, PageMaker. So I'm not a novice. I recently subscribed to the whole CS6 suite and needed to upgrade my InDesign skills. The Classroom in a Book tutorial taught me something new (or an easier, smarter way to work) on each page. I found it best to read each chapter through first, to get a good idea of the skills and topic. Then I re-read the chapter at my keyboard and worked through the tutorial. The on-disk materials (in the form of a partially completed project) made the learning curve flatter and faster. By also including (on disk) a finished example of the project, I was able to double check my work. In a few days I had upgraded my monthly column by improving the template, changing the fonts, and generally speeding the process. I managed to reduce a couple of hours of layout work to a quick hour. Just by laying a grid over my pages saved a load of tinkering. I am now outputting my work as an Interactive PDF file -- making my work more useable to my readers. I did run into a barrier: I wanted to imbed small video clips into my column. It appears I am just a few months ahead of being able to do that readily. My videos played on some hardware but not an Apple iPad or iPhone. But that's not so much an Adobe issue than Apple. So no wonder the 'Classroom' did not handle it. Adobe InDesign CS6 Classroom in a Book Excellent book. Easy to read. Understandable to a non-novice (rank novices might need a tutorial on basic desk top publishing first!) I found no areas of confusion, but lots of illustrations, examples and design ideas (more than I can use this month). A must have in my computer library. Written by a good teacher.

I really rate the Adobe Classroom in a Book series. Why? Because they can either be read as a primer to using the application in question, as a tutorial with the application open, or as a useful help manual/reminder once you have got started. Okay so not every bit of detail is included, but a good balance has been struck to get you started with all the key features and grasp an overall understanding of the Adobe workspace and terminology. Once you have that, you can go looking in the Adobe help to answer specific questions. If you are going to invest in a product from the Adobe Creative Suite, invest in the corresponding 'classroom in a book' at the same time.

Se per voi l'inglese non è un particolare ostacolo, consiglio vivamente a tutti questo libro! Il materiale didattico (sul cd, o liberamente scaricabile una volta acquistata l'edizione ebook) è davvero smart perché permette di imparare InDesign lavorando direttamente su contenuti complessi, dando da subito la percezione piena degli strumenti che si stanno utilizzando. Sto imparando da zero, non ho nozioni di design ed è la prima volta in generale che ho a che fare con la Creative Suite di Adobe: questo libro mi sta accompagnando in maniera approfondita e metodica nello scoprire questo incredibile mondo di InDesign, e vi dirò di più: mi sto anche divertendo!

Lo que esperaba. Un libro como los otros que tengo de Adobe. Hacen fácil lo difícil.

référence, exercices, Bien Siquis enim militarium vel honoratorum aut nobilis inter suos rumore tenus esset insimulatus fovisse partes hostiles, iniecto onere catenarum in modum beluae trahebatur et inimico urgente vel nullo, quasi sufficiente hoc solo, quod nominatus esset aut delatus aut postulatus, capite vel multatione bonorum aut insulari solitudine damnabatur.