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Summary: Classroom in a Book, the best way to learn Adobe Products
Review: If you are new to any Adobe software, the best way to learn it, is the Classroom in a Book. These books are well-written, the exercises are excellent and easy to follow and Adobe does a good job of setting up a logical order of features to learn. If you buy this book and complete it, cover to cover, you won't be an Illustrator expert. You will, however, have an excellent foundation to becoming an expert! As a professional designer, I have been using Adobe products for years now. Every time a new version of Photoshop or Illustrator comes out, I purchase the Classroom in a Book to go along with it. Not only do I learn the new features, I also fill gaps in my knowledge. (You'd be surprised how often we "experts" don't know (or forget) some of the basics, making some of our tasks more difficult than they need to be. Another note, if you are new to design, pay careful attention to the look of the completed projects. The were obviously put together by excellent designers. My only complaint with Adobe is...given the price of the software, these books should be included in the package.
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Summary: Good Writing
Review: Nicely put together book that goes into detail, but doesn't bore you with too many arcane commands. Helps you get up and running quickly. Very much recommended.
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Summary: Very nice introduction to Illustrator
Review: No, it doesn't teach you everything (you have to fool around with the program to learn more...), but it is a good intro on how to use the program. Same goes for the Photoshop version.
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Summary: Not that easy to follow
Review: Not a very easy book to follow. Also I did not a few mistakes in the book that made me pull my hair out. Otherwise the information presented and the exercises were good with alot of hands on practice. There was a problem with the CD-Rom as I opened the an illustration from lesson 00, Illustrator gave me a message that the AGaramond Bold is not installed on my system. I couldn't find that font on the CD-Rom, I am guessing Adobe would like it's customers to additionally buy the fonts from them as well. If the book was written differently with the same lessons and objectives, it would be much more clearer to understand and a 4 hour job would easily be completed in 1 hour.
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Summary: Not that easy to follow
Review: Not a very easy book to follow. Also I did not a few mistakes in the book that made me pull my hair out. Otherwise the information presented and the exercises were good with alot of hands on practice. There was a problem with the CD-Rom as I opened the an illustration from lesson 00, Illustrator gave me a message that the AGaramond Bold is not installed on my system. I couldn't find that font on the CD-Rom, I am guessing Adobe would like it's customers to additionally buy the fonts from them as well. If the book was written differently with the same lessons and objectives, it would be much more clearer to understand and a 4 hour job would easily be completed in 1 hour.
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Summary: Droll
Review: The author must live in a fantasy world where everyone has as much time as they need, as much patience as they need, and jobs that are so over simplified that a script could be written in 10 minutes that would complete replace them. Is this written by Adobe? Is this what they expect us to do with their software? They need to get a clue. Why is it that other books offer insights, while this "official" book makes such a potentially exciting product seem so mundane?
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed at best
Review: The major attraction of this book for me is that it was free, since the local library had it. :P It's not really designed in a way that enables new users to understand the appeal of this program. AFter this book, it seems easier even for ME (with zero artistic talent) to just plain learn to draw with a pencil. Well, Illustrator 9 has GOT to have more practical uses than what this book would seem to imply, so I'm going to try other books.
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Summary: Tedious way to learn
Review: The project and tutorial approach to this book makes it very difficult to actually learn anything about the software. I had hoped to come away with more than just a rudimentary knowledge of the product, but not because of this book.
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Summary: Good if you've lost the manual.
Review: This book does a good job of explaining how to use the most basic features of Adobe Illustrator. The author develops the each section in a systematic way. This book is helpful if you are new to the Illustrator environment. However, if you OWN THE MANUAL, unfortunately this book does not add much to what you already know. Users who are looking for more advanced applications or techniques when using Illustrator, this book is not for you. I would have also liked if the author had talked a bit about interactivity with other applications.
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Summary: Clear, comprehensive and logical
Review: This book suits my learning style perfectly. After only a few lessons I am able to combine information and apply it to individual projects.
Each lesson will assume that you haven't read the others and repeat certain instructions, such as how to reset preferences.
I like that comprehensiveness.
With other books I had to struggle through lengthy explanations of tools and functions, but with CIB's complete specific directions I can see how the tool works and experiment further.
Can't understand why so many people are trashing this book
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