 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Adobe InDesign is a full-fledged, sophisticated program, tightly integrated with the other Adobe industry leading graphics and Web programs in the Creative Suite. It's the essential tool for anyone doing page layout and design.
Real World Adobe InDesign CS4 offers industrial-strength and time-saving techniques for design professionals who need to start laying out, proofing, and printing pages with InDesign CS4, without missing a beat (or a deadline!) in their fast-paced production cycles. Design pros will find everything they need here to successfully master InDesign's advanced page layout tools, manage color, snippets, and use the program more efficiently.
They'll also find complete coverage of essential features in InDesign CS4, including: live preflight, customizable Links panel, conditional text, cross references, interactive document capability with the new SWF file, animated page transitions, export to Flash CS4 functionality, Smart Guides and Smart Spacing, spread rotation, and smart text reflow.
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Average Customer Rating:   It's all covered in Real World InDesign CS4 InDesign CS4
Olav Martin Kvern and David Blatner
At 778 pages, this book packs a whopping amount of information and serves as an excellent resource to all things InDesign. A fan of Blatner's books since the days of Quark XPress 3, I've enjoyed his thoughtful and often humorous approach to explaining the programs and this book is no exception.
Over the course of 14 chapters, the book covers both the essentials and advanced features, making the book suitable for InDesign users of all levels. Of particular note is Chapter 11 on printing. The mysteries of flattener presets, transparency and applying these to every day print jobs are covered here.
In addition, there are many useful tips and shortcuts throughout the book. They're not set in a tinted box or pulled to the side of the page as in other books. My suggestion is to dig in; the answer is likely to be revealed in that chapter. Both authors have worked with this software for years, so anything the reader has trouble with, they too have encountered, solved and answered in this book. Excellent guide for complicated InDesign work Adobe's InDesign CS4 is far and away the best text and graphics to print software. It is moving Quark off its well-deserved pinnacle in this category for professional use.
The trouble is, there is so much power with the endless well of commands necessary, it is very difficult to use. And, of course, Adobe continues to avoid really good help for its customers. In this case Adobe Press has joined with Peachpit Press for the 827-page Real World InDesign CS4 by Olav Martin Evers and David Blatner. The only failing -- and it is major -- is the total lack of color which, for a work in this subject, is unforgivable at the $55 price -- less with Amazon but still should have color.
Adobe must find some way to re-categorize their huge and growing encyclopedia of commands for all their software. At the very least they should have the same commands for the same effects in their other fine software. The full design suite should function more fully together even though some elements can be read by InDesign, it can be tricky.
This book is late in arriving. CS4 is likely to be renewed as CS5 fairly soon and, with Adobe, you'll be waiting for the update for commands. But, meanwhile, the best quality of this book measured against others for the same purpose, is being able to find the obscure commands necessary for that skill, trick or set of strokes you need for a book, poster, whatever.
And, for that, the Evers.Blatner work can't be beat. An Invaluable Reference Manual If you have any plans to use InDesign CS4, get this book!
The authors are masters of the subject. They're steeped in the programming. They bring longtime experience with the software and its earlier iterations, so they understand its many strengths and occasional limitations.
It helps that they're also skilled writers. They use the software in the production of their own books. Therefore they have an unerring sense of the perspective of the actual user. This is a tremendous benefit. The index, which is vital to users of this kind of book, reflects a powerful user-focus.
Fine book. Highly recommended. Great reference manual I live by indexes and glossaries, probably the Google age, but this book has a large index, and at anytime I need to find something, I can go to it, grab what I need and be on to finishing my project. I went to the regular bookstores to flip through all the various manual by hand, then ordered this one at Amazon. Look no further I bought this book for my wife who was beginning to use InDesign for work. All I hear is "Wow! This book is amazing" about five or six times a day. All the information you need is in here - very well structured and easy to find. It seems to anticipate the most common problems that users get stuck on too. If you are looking for an easy-to-use reference-while-you-work InDesign manual, then look no further. |  |
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