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

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.

The first few chapters are extremely basic but there are a few tips that can be of great help. So if you're someone familiar with Adobe software such as Photoshop or Illustrator and feel they're unnecessary I'd suggest toughing them out. This book is very cut and dry pointing out every detail step by step. However bland the instruction is I have found this book to be quite helpful. I'd suggest not skipping the tips along the sides of the pages as these offer shortcuts, and extra ways to do things.
This book gets the job done and the time taken per chapter is very reasonable. Have fun designing everyone.

Adobe InDesign (ID) CS6 is the eighth version of the leader in publishing applications. Like many of the flagship apps in Adobe's Creative Suites and Creative Cloud, ID has become quite robust in its power and feature set. Mastering any one of the key CS apps is no small task. It's essential to gain a firm foundation in them. "Adobe InDesign CS6 Classroom in a Book" (CIB) is a key to gaining that foundation.

For the most part, CIB is designed to appeal to the beginner or someone who has been dabbling in ID and has decided to get serious about it. However, it has a following of creative professionals who see it as a guide to what's new and what needs to be mastered beyond CIB's pages. With the huge success of the new Creative Cloud subscriptions, we suspect those who have mastered a few CS6 apps will want to expand their skills to take command of a few others.

The CIB series is step-by-step lesson oriented. However, this particular CIB has been artfully designed to permit the reader to pick and choose chapters. This makes it excellent for someone, like ourselves, who have been following the series for many years. For this review we'll side-by-side compare the CS5 edition of this book to this latest one, both of which were written by John Cruise and Kelly Kordes Anton.

If you're new to Adobe CS apps, you'll find the the first chapter to be mind boggling. We suggest you move through it slowly as it introduces you to the workspace. The good point is that once you have completed it, you'll be prepared to expand your learning into many other CS6 apps since the concepts are spread across quite a few others. If you're already well-versed in Illustrator or Photoshop, this will feel like familiar territory but take the time to learn what is specific to InDesign. This chapter has been beautifully redesigned from the previous edition with excellent new sample art.

If you're new to ID, you may want to take a breather before moving on to the second chapter which does an excellent job of taking you through ID basics. This makes the new user feel quite accomplished by the time they have completed page 51.

The beauty to the way this book has been created is that the reader is given some excellent sample art and layouts to work with. In addition to being great teaching tools, they are visually inspirational. Like the first chapter, the third one has been completely redesigned. It does a great job of making the reader very comfortable setting up documents.

So far, the reader has been working with text. The fourth chapter does a superb job of squeezing work with objects into a judicious number of pages while covering many concepts. Though the content of the CS6 edition is quite similar to the CS5 one, some of the artwork has been updated and has a refreshing feeling to it. Since so much learning happens in this chapter, it's best to move slowly and be sure you understand each concept.

In the fifth chapter on flowing text, the reader is presented with quite a few techniques which should make them feel like they've become an ID power user. After only 146 pages and maybe as little as 5 or 6 hours of lessons, that's quite an accomplishment.

The sixth chapter on editing text allows the reader to gain the feel for a variety of workflows which they may encounter while working in the publishing field. This chapter, which is pretty much recycled from the CS5 edition, does a well in preparing the readers for the professional work environment while presenting options for how they may wish to work themselves.

We're impressed with the way the seventh chapter on typography does more than take the reader through how to accomplish the technical aspects of ID. It appropriately assumes that the ID user wants to exercise many of their own design elements into a project and presents some of the best practices to implement such directions.

The eighth chapter on color commendably offers the reader some background on the technology of the printing process and making sure the user has properly calibrated their system to insure the best outcome from screen to printed output. The authors' attention to these details demonstrates that they want to teach the reader more than how to manipulate the software.

How ID works with styles is not dramatically different than the long retired PageMaker or far less frequently used QuarkXPress, but if the reader has never worked with a professional publishing app before, there's a bit of a learning curve. This CIB's ninth chapter does a very thorough job of covering it. If the reader works through the lesson carefully, the concepts should feel comfortable.

Chapter ten is another example enabling the reader with some powerful tools and concepts which even go beyond ID. Working with Bridge and Illustrator plus understanding the role those apps play in the ID workflow is vital to successfully working in InDesign.

Admittedly, we've never been in love with how tables work in InDesign. Yet, chapter eleven not only presents the principles well, it makes the process seem fun in this somewhat redesigned chapter from the same in the CS5 edition.

The twelfth chapter on transparency is an exploration of the many tricks and techniques available to a designer to really make a document pop. This should not only teach the readers but will hopefully ignite creativity for using ID projects of their own.

Printing and exporting documents are essential to successfully using ID. Chapter thirteen prepares the reader with the skills and understandings needed for this, in what seems like a shift in gears from the tone of the previous chapters. But, it's much needed.

InDesign CS6 introduced many powerful new feature sets. ID CS5 introduced some terrific interactive tools. The CS5 edition of this book had a fourteenth chapter on designing for interactivity which we are disappointed to see was removed from the CS6 edition.

It has been replaced by a chapter on forms in InDesign, a new feature set and another chapter on publishing eBooks another new aspect of ID CS6. A sixteenth chapter on long documents has also been added. The latter is a must-have for some projects.

It's not fair to downgrade our rating of this book because a chapter has been removed, yet we feel the lack of interactivity in this volume cheats the reader out of a much needed learning experience. Though we cannot give the book a solid five stars it seems like a 4.8 is appropriate. Of course, the missing chapter may not have been a decision the authors made but is instead a product of page count. Of course, we've rounded our 4.8 up to a 5 because that's how the process works. However, for the CS7 edition we'd love to see another 26 pages added to bring the missing CS5 chapter back.

This appears to be a very well thought-out and put-together book. I purchased it, however, because of the "bonus chapter 17" - Creating An iPad Publication - shown in the Look Inside preview. That was what I was really interested in. Alas, when the book arrived Chapter 17 was NOT in the book; nor was it included on the enclosed CD. I've already popped the seal on the CD to check if it were there, so now I can't return it. I'm stuck with a book I don't want. Beware of the false advertising.

This series is a tremendous waste of money. You'd think that "Classroom in a Book" would mean "If you read this book you'll learn how to use the software." Not even close. You would also think "If I have a question I'll be able to look up the answer." Not remotely true. This is actually a CD of sample projects with which you can follow along to see how they were created, in case you want to do something similar. The book is commentary on those sample projects. But if you want to learn how to do something specific, or look up how to use a certain feature, this book is useless. Many of the software features aren't even listed in the index.

Shortly after my purchase I had a long chat with an Adobe rep about my concerns regarding this product and he promised "I will go ahead and escalate the case to our relevant team who would be able to review this chat and get back to you with an appropriate resolution." They never contacted me. And while I was waiting to hear back from them, the return window expired, so now I have a very expensive paperweight. I am extremely disappointed in Adobe.

Fount this book totally useless. Actually, I thought someone raced this out just to make a few extra bucks off CS6. So returned it.

I am a 54 year old with NO tech knowledge, and this was exactly what I needed. Nothing is taken for granted, it leads you through every step. I finished it with a better understanding of InDesign than my techy son.

To be honest, I knew how to use Photoshop and Illustrator but was very intimidated by InDesign. It took me only 2 weeks to go from knowing nothing about InDesign, to being very proficient at it and loving the program. Highly recommended for those who want to learn InDesign but feel intimidated by its complexity. My only complaint is that Chapter 15-16 was kind of useless to me and wished they had included some of the newer contents like Liquid Layout, Alternate Layouts, and Interactive Design.

A very good book to start with Adobe InDesign CS6. It introduces you step by step to the different features of the application (Software). As it is indicated by its name, it is a Classroom in a Book.
The only drawback: since the book teaches by examples and practices, it is hard to use it as a reference book like "Real World Adobe InDesign CS6".

Very difficult to find a solution o a specific issue. If you go through the book chapter by chapter, you will most likely learn a lot. But, if you're like me, working in the field already and just need to know how to do ONE specifc task, it's pretty useless.