Adobe Creative Suite 2 Classroom in a Book

New users of Adobe's Creative Suite 2, which includes the latest versions of popular graphics and design programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and In Design, may find themselves overwhelmed by the significant number of features (many of them new to these latest versions) in these programs. With such a daunting set of tools and accompanying complexity, it may seem an insurmountable task to jump into these programs and start working. Never fear, though, as a helping hand from Adobe's own book series (Classroom in a Book) is here to help. Below, we review the title "Adobe Creative Suite 2 Classroom in a Book."

Weighing in at just over 300 pages, Classroom in a Book might strike you as an insufficiently voluminous text, given the complexity and number of Adobe programs it covers. However, it's clear that the purpose of this Classroom in a Book title is not to be a comprehensive guide to every feature of every program in Creative Suite 2. Indeed, there are books thousands of pages deep available on each of the programs in Creative Suite (and, in fact, there are separate "Classroom in a Book" titles for each of the individual programs in Creative Suite 2). The purpose of this Classroom in a Book title is to provide a very quick and useful guide to jumping right into the Creative Suite 2 programs with a minimum of fuss. The goal of Classroom in a Book is to have you comfortably using Creative Suite 2 as quickly as possible, and we think it achieves this goal.

Just like Apple's iLife programs, the programs in Adobe's Creative Suite 2 are intended to work together seemlessly to help you produce a variety of creative projects from print designs and photo retouching to web design and electronic publishing. The great thing about Classroom in a Book is that it shows you very quickly how to use many of the programs together in a way that will maximize your effectiveness with them. If you are used to using older versions of one or two programs from the Suite, then this books is a great tool in learning how to use more of the programs from Creative Suite together in a productive way.

The content of Classroom in a Book consists of numerous tutorials in each of the programs contained in Creative Suite 2. The examples show you concretely how to creative various design tasks and how you can leverage different programs in the suite to achieve the tasks. Examples include lessons on how to create a CD album cover, how to create a newsletter, and how to take a print design to the web.

Not to be missed is the CD-ROM which accompanies the Adobe Creative Suite Classroom in A Book. The CD contains, as you might expect, electronic files used in the tutorials from the book. In addition, you'll find various video tutorials that show you how to perform certain tasks in Creative Suite 2 programs. Finally, Adobe has included PDFs from the Adobe Studio that offer additional tips and tutorials to learn from.

In conclusion, we found the Adobe Creative Suite 2 Classroom in a Book title to be a great introduction to a very complex set of programs and one that will be valuable for those wanting to come up to speed on Creative Suite 2 in a minimum of time and by getting their hands dirty with actual design projects.

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