Adobe Books

I had no prior working knowledge of javascript and I wanted to make my Acrobat forms more functional. This book served the purpose.
The book is a little dated, but still very relevant. Things have changed with the release of Acrobat 8, but the information in the book is still valuable. The book gives step-by-steps on how to do things in previous versions, but if you are willing to look around, you can find the screens referred to in Acrobat 8. With that in mind, I had to give the book a five star rating, since I can't fault the author on anything in the book.
I am looking forward to books this good written for Acrobat 8.

It's made for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, the book isn't available as an updated version for the newest Adobe Professional. The examples are quite simple.

I was looking for some more advanced features than were offered, but it looks like it will be helpful to me moving forward. I build alot of forms in Adobe Acrobat. If you have never done javascript in Acrobat, or have intermediate knowledge, it may be a helpfull book for you.

I love this book! I am a professional graphic designer that does not know how to write any JavaScript. I just wanted to be able to create more dynamic pdf files. The author did a great job explaining the JavaScript used in this book in a way that non programmers can grasp!

Mr. Deubert was also very gracious in helping me customize one of the scripts in his book to work for a specific project I had. He stands behind his product!

I recommend this to anyone that is a non programmer looking to learn how to use JavaScript with Acrobat.

I have been making forms in Acrobat since version 3.0, and have a background in Dbase III, Foxpro, Visual Basic .NET, and SQL 2000. However, I never learned Javascript formally or in-depth.

This book was an excellent springboard to a good working knowledge of JavaScript, especially relating to Acrobat. The chapters are broken down by functionality and increase in complexity, and each has at least one project that the author will guide you step-by-step (you can download the PDF's from the author's website). The book was edited very well, I found only one mistake (a typo) after reading the book almost page for page. What makes this an outstanding book is the clarity of the examples and explanations the author has so obviously spent much time on to help us "poor newbies".

My focus was how to get started interacting with databases (SQL or Access), and while the first Chapter (16) was review for people familiar with databases, Chapter 17 really got me started. The project in the book gives the basics -- to go beyond, you need the following resources: the Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Reference and the Scripting Guide (...).

Developers know that the devil is in the detail, so once I got past the database interface hurdle, the other chapters were just as useful to put the necessary finishing touches on my project.

Here's the bottom line: If you are already advanced in your knowledge of JavaScript, this isn't your book! You know enough to pick up the Acrobat JavaScript Reference and figure it out. If you're just starting out or need to know, in detail, what capabilities Acrobat and JavaScript can give you for an IT solution, this book is an excellent resource.

One last thing that makes the author of the book outstanding: He has a free newsletter for those looking for better ways of utilizing Acrobat (...)

I've used Visual Quickstart books for years. I've used them for Photoshop, and Quark 6.0. I learned Quark using version 3.0 back many moons ago. I have another "inDesign" book that is way too big and complicated then I remembered the Visual Quickstart. They are amazing books and are easy to use. I just wish InDesign was easier to used like Quark. The only reason I', using InDesign rather Then Quark is I just switched to a Mac and I didnt have Quark for the Mac. But the book is GREAT

Technically, this will teach you how to use indesign. But it's so boring and repetitive. It's like memorizing a list.

Having newly come from Microsoft Publisher, In Design was a challenge. I used the Adobe manual in parallel with this one, got more out of the combination than the sum of each one by itself. Managed to produce a design in three weeks from start to finish. Friends who know the business find that a remarkably short time.

Ok booIt is hard to find what you need.

I was used to an InDesign software from far ago, the dinosaur era. When got the newest version, was at a complete lost. This book explains in easy words EVERYTHING! Adobe's software is great, but their manuals can be used and understood by those with an IQ of 300 up. Am grateful for this book and fully recommend it.

'Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom' is a decent book but my biggest complaint is this is a book about using a Photoshop product for improving image quality and the images in this book are washed out and grainy. I don't know if it's the printing style used or the images themselves, but when you have a crystal clear cover that jumps out at you and then the content within leaves a lot to be desired... well that's just no good.

Overall the book does what I would expect. It shows you the basics of using Photoshop Lightroom, how to get pictures in, what you can do with them, etc etc. This book should improve your workflow and streamline the image editing process but it's not a home run that I would expect.

*** RECOMMENDED

I read many books on Lightroom 1.XXX in an attempt to create a college tutorial course. This book was concise, to the point and did not waste any time or space in allowing you to get to the info.

The authors love their craft and it shows.

How good is the book?

Well, apart from my copies of Evening's and Orwig's takes on Lightroom 2, if Steinmuller and Gulbins put out a Lightroom 2 update, I'll pre-order.

I am a self-taught Photoshop hack. First started using it when version 3 came out (on a TON of 3.5 floppy disks). I have been able to use it enough to generate/ edit web images, scan prints, etc. It is grossly overpowered for what I use it for, but it's all I know and the company I work for is willing to pay for it. I am equally inept in my photographic workflow processes. I just take pictures, use my limited knowledge of Photoshop to get them to a point where I like the finished product, and go on my merry way. Until now.

Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom is helping change my bad habits. Originally written to cover Lightroom 1.2, the processes are still applicable to 1.41, the latest version I am using. I had seen Lightroom and sort of dismissed it as just more $$ to spend until I started reading this book. Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom has given me insight into using the tools contained in Lightroom and how using them will affect my images. At just over 200 pages, this book is full of images and practical examples. I used to edit my images exclusively in Photoshop. Now I do most of my post processing in Lightroom, exporting the results to be uploaded into flickr, iStockphoto, or burned to CD. I doubt I would have changed my habits were it not for this book. Needless to say, it is highly recommended if you have been curious about using Lightroom.

I get tired of Scott Kelby's humor but at least his books are readable, and useful. This book, well, I suppose all the information is there but I kept drifting off from the dull text and even duller PC-inspired graphics (they could at least use Mac screen grabs). I think the front cove pretty much sums up the book.

It looks and reads like your basic college text book. It's going back

I completely disagree with the positive feedbacks regarding this book for a variety of reasons. I took it fascinated by the "covers Version 1.2" note, thus suggesting a specialized "version 1.2" text, a most current book of them all, an advanced insider instruction to Lightroom. The dilemma about Lightroom is that it keeps changing from version to version. Users of this program know about its immaturity and stability issues. "Version 1.2" really sells in such conditions.

Another reason to pick this book was that I like to read the essays from Outback Photo and the FotoEspresso Online Magazine by the same author. But the reality with this particular book is different:

1) Too short to really provide any add-on value to the standard Adobe's manual, and to the many web-zines. 200 pages, minus approx 50 *not* about Lightroom at all, make this book too short to cover any advanced issues in the 5 main modules of Lightroom. This book is virtually just as brief and insufficient, as is the PDF file provided with the Lightroom by Adobe.

2) Tries to please everybody at the risk of not satisfying anybody, to quote the great Donald Knuth from one of his forewords. For example, do you really need to buy a specialized "version 1.2" Lightroom book to learn about what is a Jpeg and what is a RAW file? Yes, its true! This thin booklet spends a few pages to tell you revelations that Jpeg has different levels of compressions, and, yes, you guess it: You should use the lowest compression for highest quality.

3) Digresses into usage of other software and/or hardware. Do you really need whopping 3 full pages with screen shots from a Huey screen calibration software? No, you surely do not need that, a product flyer and a self guiding menu will do it! Besides, Huey is only one possibility. We have also all the "Spiders" and several more. In any case, I would rather be using the manual provided with the device instead of buying an extra book about something else, to look into it for another copy of a hardware gadget manual. I use Huey, its fantastic. And trust me, the menu is self guiding. You ought to press the Next button and proceed with the instructions. These 3 pages 191-193 in this book should be better devoted to Lightroom.

4) Poor print quality. It is really kind of difficult to talk about color, and look at the pale faded looking print by rokynook press. These images look like projected through a light gray filter.

5) Instructions seem to be very MacIntosh oriented, thus not attracting the vast majority of users, who are rather likely to use Windows and see completely different Lightroom menus. Its basic statistics...

I am at peace with author attempt to describe the workflow between Lightroom and Lightzone (8 pages), but this shows even more how few information is about Lightroom 1.2 per se. Do you need more examples of "not to the topic"? Have you seen compact flash cards in a box? Jeez, now you can! Have you seen a card reader? Now you can too.

One puzzling thing about Lightoom are its color curves. I am a seasoned computer scientist with a PhD, I do photograph for 30 years, and yet I fail to make any use of them based on information and instructions provided so far. I would rather be still using RawShooter, but Adobe bought and shut it down to "assimilate" its user base for Lightroom. A look into Adobe's forums shows just how many people are confused, if not lost in Lightroom's baroque interface, shuttered by bugs, malfunctions and poor performance. Such program needs instructions of more experienced photographers, who maybe stand in direct contact with Adobe development team and can explain what the manual and own experiments fail to provide.

Would you believe that the ENTIRE set of development operations, what includes these dreaded tone curves, is covered on mere 32 pages (pages 78 to 111, chapter 4.) Can we really learn anything new but to see another enumeration of menus and sliders in such a brief description?

Example: Split toning, half page 98. ..."split toning can also be (mis)used to reduce the blue cast of your shadows." Excellent, I am excited! Lets see it, lets learn!! Oops, there are no instructions, no lesson of just how to (mis)use the split toning to work on the blue shadows... This was it! Authors said "it can be used" and that was it. This is the KIND OF VALUE PROVIDED BY THIS BOOK. I am sorry, this does not do it.

My recommendation is to take rather Mikkel Aaland's book, what is clearly my favorite among the otherwise hastily thrown books about Lightroom.

Wonderful exhaustive reference to Photoshop techniques, suffering only from lack of decent images to follow what the author is trying to tell you. The grayscale images on recycled paper convey far too little information for the amount of text covered. The color plates help some, but trying to locate them, in two far-apart locations yet, makes any connection between text and outcome all that more tedious.

Frankly, notwithstanding the disingenuous reasoning of why NOT to provide quality color images (whether on CD or online), it would have been cheaper in the end to include a CD with the book and dispense with the color plates altogether. The lack of see-for-yourself images is particularly troublesome in the promising section on layer blending modes. Deke keeps on talking and talking, but after a while you give up with a bad headache because even the original layer arrangement isn't all that clear. Too bad, really - this would have been one of the most outstanding parts of the book.

The Bible becomes even more confusing when you learn that there's a professional version with exactly the same title (librarians just love that!) -- sort of like an Old and a New Testament. Unfortunately, now that I own both versions, there are indeed some differences (mostly omissions) between the two. Even so, there are huge sections that are almost verbatim repetitions of the Old Testament, other than for the high-quality paper and the on-page color images (yet even here the section on layer blends remains unfulfilling for lack of a CD to learn how the author got there). Worse, the tantalizing in-depth treatment of Adobe's Camera RAW plugin doesn't show up till near the end and, truthfully, isn't that greatly changed from the original (even the tea kettle illustration remains unchanged, other than for the color).

In all truth, McClellands "All-in-One" text that includes a CD and video strips may be not as complete as the Bibles, but you'll learn a lot more, and retain it much better.

All told: the Bible(s) remains the definitive Photoshop reference work, presented in readable style with a nice touch of gentle humor. As it stands, this is a great resource for intermediate to advanced users, and a great buy pound-for-pound, well worth the top five stars. Substituting a CD for the color plates would turn this already bright star into one heck of a super-Nova.

Honestly, I was somewhat disappointed with McClelland's Photoshop CS Bible. In the Preface he mentions another version titled "Photoshop CS Bible, Professional Edition" which I don't think really exists. If it did maybe I would have been less disappointed. I have been using various versions of Photoshop for over 6 years and have bought many Photoshop how-to books for most of the versions. I hadn't gotten around to getting a book for Photoshop CS until now. What I was looking for was a very detailed book getting into the changes made for version CS and especially getting into the details of the automated and batch functions.

Unfortunately this book barely touched on the specific new areas of Photoshop that I wanted to learn about, despite having over 1000 pages! I also noticed that there are only about 16 actual color pages in the whole book. For those just learning how to use Photoshop, this lack of color examples could be a real drawback.

This book is really a bible covering everything about Photoshop CS. All what you need to know. I have two issues about this book: it is not tailored to a certain provision such as graphics designers, photographers and so on. The second is the lack of proper classifications, for example: file formatting is explained in full details, but not mentioned in the Table of Contents. Nevertheless it is a great book for those consider themselves serious Photoshop users. Looking forward to see CS2 version of the book.

This book has a very thorough walkthrough of all of the features of CS. But the majority of the book is in black and white, while competitive books are in full color and a lot shorter. There are two color inserts that show the color versions of what is explained in the rest of the book. The examples are not great either. In particular the filter examples seem to have been picked to show the most dramatic effect of the filter, as opposed to an optimal use of the filter to show it in it's best form. I recommend Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One instead.

Who are we, mere mortals, to make easy criticism with the great achievement of the Master himself?

THE Bible is THE bible of photoshop, and lives up to its name, after setting the standard for photoshop related literature. It's the king of books of the king of programs, version after version, book after book.

It does have its flaws, sure, as Michael Jordan had his, as MichaelAngelo's David may have them, after centuries of being under the magnifying glass of the most avid experts.

It is OK to search new horizons, such as Scott Kelby's work, practical, step-by-step structured for we beginners and amateurs. But THE BIBLE is the book of photoshop to have at home if you could only have one, the industry benchmark for years, one of that books about something that achieve a place by themselfs and go way beyond the category of tutorials.

In my opinion, a book maybe not to be bought with every change of photoshop, but maybe every two upgrades or the program or so. A writing style and approach to teaching which has produced the best material (if the books are good, try the dvds series etc)about photoshop and illustrator.

Do not dare to say the name of the Great Deke in vain!!!!!!

Eddie Tapp is a very succesfull photographer and what he offers here basically is how he setup his photoshop to work on photos. Sometimes developing an effecient workflow can be difficult, and what this book does is basically give you how his is setup. Does that mean its the best way or the only way? No but it is a way that works and even if you have your own workflow going, you might find some tips in here to help tweak it or make it more effecient. Its is not however a book to teach you photoshop from beginning to finish. it just introduces you to concepts that you will use in processing a photo.

I bought this book because I thought it would help me with workflow. But that was before Lightroom was released. This book is not a good introduction to Photoshop and not so great for workflow either. The Eddie Tapp color management book is useful, but I can't say the same for this one. There are many better Photoshop books, and with Lightroom the workflow is spelled out in the software. I do not recommend.

I've read many Photoshop books but this one is the best when dealing with raw work flows. Chris Morrison.

Eddie Tapp's PHOTOSHOP WORKFLOW SETUPS offers all the basics on how to customize Photoshop for digital photography, using its powerful features to not only manipulate photo quality, but to customize the program itself. From creating keyboard shortcuts and menus to work smarter to managing workflow with Adobe Bridge and understanding Photoshop's palettes, the emphasis on streamlining Photoshop's many options will please photographers who have seen multitudes of books on using the program, but little on how to use it more efficiently.

I recommend this book for anyone who does Photoshop. If you're a beginner, start with this book. It explains in detail what things are and how they work. Then, moves on to tell you how to customize just for you and how you work.
It is also a great reference book as you try new things.

Recieved item on time, right when we were told it would arrive. Book in very good condition.

It is a comprehensive step by step book. I liked the fact that it also included alternative instructions for the instances when a Mac would have different commands.

I found the tutorials easy to use and thought they taught how to use Acrobat very well. Some items may get repetitive if you have purchased other CS2 books, but I recommend it for anyone that purchases Adobe Acrobat CS2.

This book is not about creating PDF documents from scratch. It is about converting an already existing document into a PDF file. It focuses on converting Microsoft Office files (Windows) to PDF, converting Microsoft Office files (MAC) to PDF, converting other files to PDF, converting paper forms to PDF, etc. It also focuses on how to combine multiple forms into a single document.

It presents simple views for addressing tasks and does not go into much detail. It shows one way of doing things and does not cover any exceptions or problems a user might encounter.

The three pages in the book on capturing data and handling it after is primitive and not useful instruction.

It does not show how to create a document from scratch. The chapter on using the Designer is only 50 pages and is also a high level view.

The book was overall a good book with all what you need to know about Adobe Acrobat. I am preparing for the exam and the book does not cover 75% of the test. Unfortunately Adobe did not think of this and decided to make it very hard for us. Microsoft on the other hand has many books that cover the topics for their exams. Wish Adobe would learn that one thing from them....

I had to buy this book for school.It's full of lessons you follow along with, using art and graphics provided on a CD. As far as reference or help with your own projects, forget it. Your better off googling your question. If following along is all you need then, it's a nice book. The puppet stuff is OK. That helped a bit in learing it.
I had a question about nesting, they said it was pg 19. They just tell you what it is, not how to do it. ( Creativecow.com had a video explaining it)
I would not recommend this book.

This book totally fit my expectation. I'm a beginner in this theme and the lections and the descriptions are very clear and gave me a really good background to start my work with after effects. I can recommand this book for everyone, how will start the work with this software.

This book is well written and fun to go through. It's a "must-have" for anyone who wants to dive into AfterEffects.

Great book for walking through the basic, prominent features of AE. The included DVD is a definite plus.

I am totally unfamiliar with Adobe After Effects and based upon the title and experience with other Adobe Classroom in a Book titles, thought this would bring me gently into the After Effects universe.

Wrong. Totally wrong.

Rather than provide an overview of what After Effects does or is capable of, the book states "Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional provides a comprehensive set of 2D and 3D tools for compositing, animation and effects that motion-graphics professionals, visual effects artists, web designers and film and video professionals need. After Effects is widely used for digital post-production of film, video, DVD, and the web. You can compositer layers in various ways, apply and combine sophisticated visual and audio effects, and animate both objects and effects." That's it. That's the whole introduction to After Effects. Hardly illuminating and certainly not helpful to the neophyte.

The authors promises to teach the newcomer fundamental concepts and features - and it dispenses with that mission in a few inadequate pages.

Then it is on to learning the new features of After Effects CS3, which is what this book is all about.

But even that is not done well. Take for example these informative sentences: "You can pucker a shape by pulling the path's vertices inward while curving segments outward." There are no explanatory illustrations.

The lessons are nothing more than instruction lists with little explanation of what you are doing or why. The back cover declares "The fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional". I don't think so. Not by a long shot.

Overall, a disappointment and not the way for a beginner to learn about the capabilities of After Effects.

Jerry

An excellent book for getting up to speed with this program. I had never used this program before and this Classroom in a Book series walked me through the main features in a very logical step by step fashion that was both easy to follow and understand. I'm sure that there are other books that may cover this program in a more in-depth manner, but you need to get a good handle on the core features and this book does exactly that.

When following lessons to the letter I found that some of the results expected are not achieved due to the book differing from the actual sample files on the accompanying CD. Truly these are errors in publication (I found similar errors in the Photoshop Classroom In A Book and got those confirmed by Adobe and the book publisher).

Publishing an instructional guide with errors is quite frustrating when wanting to take the time to learn the product. I don't know if they corrected these in the 2.0 release, just be forewarned....

This is an uninteresting paint-by-the-numbers experience of clicking the the mouse to make things happen to canned material, without empowering you to use the software with your own projects. Well written and illustrated, but of little value.

There doesn't seem to be a lot out there for Audition to help Audition newbies like myself. Fortunately there is this book! It is well written and has taken a lot of the mystery out of the program. I'm sure that there is much more to learn, but this book does a good job of covering enough material to get one started with the program. A drawback would be the price -- it's not a large book, and seems pricey for the amount of material covered. The price of all Adobe Press materials are generally a little high in my opinion anyway. Amazon does offer a better price than most bookstores! This book has a "Getting Started" section, "Quick Tour", "Audition Basics", and 14 other chapters which cover just enough material to be easily absorbed. I like the approach this boook uses -- step by step detailed lessons. The book has a cd which contains lesson files to assist with the lessons. I have no complaints (other than the price). If you want to start learning Audition, this is a good book to consider!

A good book for beginners. I found it helpful in most questions I had about the software. I think a better "Tips and Tricks" section would be the difference between 4 and 5 stars. Good book overall. Definitely worth the money. Ross at MountainWhispers.com Audiobooks

Jennifer Alspach, Shari Nakno and Steve Samson's Adobe Creative Suite 2 Workflow is no light manual on CS2: it's for the active user who suspects there are more functions and features than meets the eye. From tips on how to use CS2 more effectively to determining which applications fit specific tasks and how to handle illustrator techniques, one big advantage here is a powerful visual approach which packs color screen shots, diagrams, and examples on each page. It's one of the best, more comprehensive CS2 workbooks on the market today and lends particularly well to seasoned users who wish to get more from the program.

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Workflow falls short in what I feel could have been a major instructional title for using all of the Adobe Suite programs together. From the title of the book, I was expecting a more in depth "how to" examples and creative ways for cross program utilization. Instead Workflow reads more like an expanded help document. Examples are few and descriptions of tools are short and to the point. It does a good job on providing overall tool awareness for major features and capabilities of the programs, but does little to empower anyone other than a beginning user. Don't get me wrong, the content is good, but is presented visually in what seems to be an moderate to advanced user title, but would be better positioned as a beginners guide. Some of the insets and "tips" seemed redundant to the content previously explained, particularly in the InDesign chapters.

Most cookbook/recipe/tip guides offer new insights into how tools can be used together for a new, creative outcome. You do not find that in this title. You do get an introduction to the different CS programs and how they are even more powerful when used together. Perhaps my view is a bit tainted because I was expecting a more advanced insight. I would recommend this title for computer savvy yet beginners with the Adobe Suite, just not for users already well into their use of Adobe applications.

This book presents a set of recipes for using the Adobe product suite. The recipes are well chosen and are described in a terse style that works for this type of content. My only gripe is that the examples could have been a little better. With books that cover products like Photoshop I like to not only learn the techniques, but be inspired by the example material in the book itself. And that's why I rate this book a 4 and not a 5.

If I had gone strictly with the title of the book, I might have not given this one 5 stars at all. It's not about creating workflows between Adobe applications and doing projects. More than that, this book is about experiences from the authors about how one can do small tasks more efficiently by using the CS2 applications together. Think of this as a book that's left next to your desk that you can pick up and read when you have 5 minutes to spare. That's the way this book will benefit. So if you think that the term "workflow' in the title means that you're going to do great things, then you got it all wrong. This book is about those little things that make great differences.

Geetesh Bajaj/Indezine.com

Full of the basics to get any soon-to-be Photoshoper off the ground with CS2. Lots of examples on virtually every page, step you through real-world situations, clearly and quickly.

A few good sections on Bridge, Version Cue and Searching right at the beginning ensure you don't make a mess later on as you wade through all the chapters devoted to Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, GoLive, and Acrobat.

While it does cover Photoshop basics such as removing color casts, red eye, setting up printers and placing text on paths...it also details how it efficiently ties into all the other Adobe applications found in CS2.

And how to make the most of your time - a good general book for beginners but even advanced users may glean new insights if they haven't tried CS2's new features.

I really liked this book! I'm a .NET developer who's taking an Advanced DW class next spring. The teacher told me if I knew the basics of DW, I'd do fine. At first, I signed up for an on-line class for $110, but the content was wrong and I couldn't follow what was going on. I decided to try this book instead, and it's great! It works particularly well if you have multiple monitors - I put the TOC page on my laptop screen, and my copy of DW CS3 on the larger external monitor. The TOC page has links to all of the various videos, ordered by chapter. Each one of the videos corresponds to a particular menu item or function in DW, and is easy to follow. I also like being able to stop the video to catch up or to make my own notes. Even though I haven't tried the exercises yet, I really like how everything's laid out. It works for me, and for a 1/3 of the price of an on-line class!

tHE VIDEO PORTIONS ARE CLEAR AND THE INSTRUCTOR IS GOOD. BUT, I HAVE A PC AND NOT A MAC SO THE ILLUSTRATIONS DID NOT HELP ME AT ALL. MAC USERS SHOULD FIND THIS A BREEZE.

This is NOT a Windows tutorial. I am furious that the product description is written intentionally leaving out the important fact that this is a MAC video. I purchased a video tutorial because I wanted to see the exact same screens in the tutorial that I see on my Windows PC. The entire video is demonstrated on a MAC, with only a very few references at the beginning of the course to differences on a Windows PC. The MAC windows are very similar, but similar is NOT the same. Additionally, the book that comes with the video is not a "detailed" written description of the video as the video training book description says. The book is a "summary only" of what is in the video.

PRO's:
I just watched the videos, not following along and doing the exercises, and got a quick idea of the most important things that Dreamweaver is capable of. That's the true value of this course. This course is much much faster than reading a 1,000 page book that includes everything that Dreamweaver is capable of. I rated this product 3 stars instead of 1 star because the product does have value because of how quickly it gets you in to using Dreamweaver for web design.

As part of my new job I had to learn DreamWeaver in a hurry. The simple, no nonsense approach to web page creation is fantastic. I looked at a lot of Dreamweaver books and most were confusing and written for people with web work experience. Garrick gets you going quickly and is very easy follow. I highly recommend this video and any other products by Garrick Chow.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3: Video Training Book

This set of materials is about 4 hours of training, created by Garrick Chow. The lessons are divided into 12 areas: Getting Started; Exploring the Interface; Managing Your Sites; Learning the Basics; Linking; Working with Cascading Style Sheets; Working with Typography; Working with Tables; Using Layout Tools; Designing for Devices; Working with Rollover Images; and Publishing Your Site. Although videos are the heart of this "book," there is a small printed reference guide (167 pages) which briefly highlights selected points for each section. However, the manual will not replace the videos. Included in this collection are exercise files, which are the files used in the video demonstrations.

These video lessons are also found on lynda.com but this collection allows you to use the materials without paying for the connect time to Lynda Weinman's site or without having an Internet connection (or should I say a fast Internet connection, which posted videos often require). All of these videos are QuickTime so that player must be installed on your computer. An important thing to keep in mind if you purchase this video collection is that the videos will not run if copied to your hard drive, but must be played from the CD drive on your computer. The exercise files can be opened and used if copied to your hard drive.

As the title implies, these lessons are primarily aimed at a new user of Dreamweaver. Filmed with CS3, there are comments periodically in the videos if something "different" is available in this release of Dreamweaver, for example the option to preview web pages in various devices (hand held devices primarily).

I think these videos would be very useful to anyone starting Dreamweaver. One of the topics which typically confronts and confuses a new user is defining a remote server, and, of course, no single explanation can solve this problem, since servers are set up differently. This resource describes setting up a Tripod account (which is free), to give people an option to post files, if they do not have an established server already.

As someone who has taught Dreamweaver for several years, I still found things in this material that I had not used or used minimally (for example, changing the docking of panels, creating a site map, using a tracing image, using AP div areas for placing items on a specific part of a page, creating a disjointed rollover, and creating a navigation bar with images). Because of these "intermediary topics" these videos would further stretch the new user to tackle more than just basic text, links, images and tables.

I thought the introduction to cascading style sheets as they can be created in Dreamweaver was very good, so this resource would be useful to someone who had a basic understanding of Dreamweaver but still felt "fizzy" when dealing with CSS. There is not a lot of detail about doing a layout using CSS, but this video series is aimed at new users. I was happy, however, that the instructor included a video about creating a printer-friendly style sheet, and illustrated in a few steps some practical reasons to take the extra steps needed to create a screen versus a print style sheet.

Review by Linda Ffolliott
Tucson Adobe Users Group member