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 give this book 4 stars because I am very impressed with the way it was put together. I'm an old PageMaker user and I really did not know what to expect. I assumed that my work with PageMaker wouldn't help me much, and I was right. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn InDesign CS6 in the fastest way possible. The reason I didn't give it that 5th star, is probably more about me than it is about the book. The tutorials were fun, and I'm not sure, but I suppose it covers the basics of everything InDesign CS6 has to offer. There were only a few places where I had to go back over an exercise when I did not get the results shown in the book; and in every case, it's because I missed a sentence, or it didn't register at the time I read it the first time. This is not a criticism by any means, but for me, after reading the book and doing the exercises, I'm embarrassed to admit that I still don't feel like I can jump in and create a work of my own. The samples are superb don't get me wrong, but the next time the writers might throw in a chapter or two that starts you with absolutely nothing and teaches you how to design your own creation from scratch--no graphics, no text, no borders and no guides. Just a blank screen with nothing to work with but your mouse and the keyboard. Maybe it will all come back to me as I begin to create my own work. In conclusion, you can't go wrong with this book. Everything you need is in there, but you'll have to use your own imagination to start using the product. I can envision myself pouring back through the pages to try and remember, "Now, how did they do that?" Skip the Kindle version, you simply have to have the graphics in front of you to do the exercises.

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. :)

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.

About 50 pages in and u learn nothing still, I should have just YouTubed

Excellent book, love the way the chapters are in timed chunks. A few minor bugs in the tutorials, but these are easily spotted, a bonus as far as I am concerned, they make you think and we all learn from mistakes.

So far I have found this series really user friendly! In each lesson you are required to use the knowledge you have gained from the previous lessons, so you are putting the skills you develop in to practise as you progress through each book. Anyone creatively inclined should also appreciate the effort that has gone in to matching the branding with the software.

Takes you through everything you need to know about Adobe InDesign. Well presented and easy to understand. Minor issues with incorrect labelling but nothing that causes confusion.