Real World Adobe InDesign 2

Rating:
Summary: A solid book filled with usefull information, well done
Review: Having been into desktop publishing since it first appeared back in the early days of the original Apple Laserwriter and PageMaker 1.0, and having been into Adobe products in-depth using After Effects, Premiere, Illustrator, Acrobat and Photoshop -- InDesign was always that one program I wanted to learn ''someday.'' Finally getting a copy, I sat down with the manual and found that key areas of the program, such as XML integration, are completely missing from the manual. Not so in this book. It's covered between pages 431 to 454. It also appears in other places within the book, localized to the subject matter discussed as it relates to XML. This is a book that is obviously written by two guys whose experience is first-rate and whose appreciation of Adobe products, in general, and InDesign, specifically, is quite apparent. Having built one of the largest and most trafficked Adobe support sites on the Net at creativecow.net, I see many, many books and this is one well worth taking note of. Good work guys, very good work. If Amazon's rating system let you pick half stars, I'd have given it 4.5 stars. The only reason I'd hold back from 5 stars is that it didn't come with a CD-ROM or any project files. But don't get me wrong, I am not complaining. What's in the book itself, is still well worth the cost of admission.

Ron Lindeboom
...
Creative Communities of the World

Rating:
Summary: A must have reference
Review: Real World InDesign 2 is the book to to replace the InDesign 2 manual. The text is well written as was the previous edition, Real World InDesign 1.5. The authors use many examples from their own experience to make a point and demonstrate the power of InDesign 2. The examples are presented both in text and immediately repeated using screen shots. Great for those who learn from visual presentation.

Real World InDesign 2 covers all aspects of the software. From basic layouts to tables and formatting to printing your final document, Real World InDesign 2 will make you layout time more efficient. All of the new InDesign 2 features are covered in depth. A chapter on long documents, for example, covers Table of Content creation and Index creation.

Weather your a new InDesign user or upgrading from version 1.5, Real World InDesign 2 is a book that will become your reference for solving those "there has to be a better way" problems. I recommend Real World InDesign 2 to anyone who wants to use InDesign more effectively and efficiently.

Rating:
Summary: Good Reference (Batteries not included)
Review: This book does not come in lessons, and it does not really give you much to do with InDesign, it just tells you how to use the features, shows a bunch of shortcuts, and gives a bit of advice here and there. There is also the occasional attempt at levity, which unfortunately doesn't always succeeed.

Despite all that, I am very satisfied: as a reference for how InDesign works and how to use its tools, it is an excellent choice. If you are unfamiliar with Illustrator and/or Photoshop, then perhaps another, more lesson/project-oriented book might be a better choice; though it is not utterly mind-numbing, this book is not really a cover-to-cover read, and without the background in Illustrator or Photoshop, you might just come away wondering if you learned anything. However, if you DO have that background, then this is a great start. For me ... this book has earned it's place on the shelf.

Rating:
Summary: Too much like a manual
Review: This book is a reasonably thorough coverage of InDesign but is sadly lacking in what I would describe as advanced areas. Like many other books a lot of it simply resembles a product manual, describing, but often not explaining, the functions and options. For example in the Workspace chapter it defines baseline grid and document grid but gives no advice whatsoever how you would use these (and no reference to further information elsewhere).
Although the style is pleasantly conversational it sometimes rambles into unecessarily detail, like explaining that ultraviolet light is around 700 nanometers - who cares - this is supposed to be about publishing.
Examples of less than expert advice abound: a discussion on line art states that these are bitmaps that only have black and white pixels - in my book you should never use bitmaps for line art; and I couldn't believe a paragraph that stated most fonts have a ½ character but there's no way to type it - the authors have obviously never used a PC!
But most annoying of all, it barely touches on InDesign's most advanced features, namely its strong interaction with XML and powerful scripting ability. Indeed the book states that an example of transformation using XML, XSL and InDesign tagged text will be posted on the Peachpit website. Not so but after a few e-mails I was able to get some helpful examples from the authors.

Rating:
Summary: Who knew?
Review: This book is better than the Adobe Manual, but I have been very disappointed. For my purposes, it spends too much space belaboring things like meny choices and far too little time on how to use InDesign 2.0 effectively. For example, if I want to place footnotes at the bottoms of pages, what is the best way to accomplish that? Or, how about suggestions for effective use of the index range options instead of just listing what they are. I can find out what they are from the online help or from the Adobe manual. I buy extra books to get extra insight. I didn't get much from this one. I wanted a book like Deke McClellend's Photoshop Bible; I didn't get it.

Rating:
Summary: Better than the Adobe manual but ...
Review: This book is better than the Adobe Manual, but I have been very disappointed. For my purposes, it spends too much space belaboring things like meny choices and far too little time on how to use InDesign 2.0 effectively. For example, if I want to place footnotes at the bottoms of pages, what is the best way to accomplish that? Or, how about suggestions for effective use of the index range options instead of just listing what they are. I can find out what they are from the online help or from the Adobe manual. I buy extra books to get extra insight. I didn't get much from this one. I wanted a book like Deke McClellend's Photoshop Bible; I didn't get it.

Rating:
Summary: In Depth coverage of InDesign
Review: This book is recommended by the Adobe InDesign Development Team and I can see why. Kvern and Blatner cover all of the basics you would expect; page layout, text controls, type characteristics, drawing, transparency, importing, exporting, color, printing, etc.

But it's the depth at which they are able to cover each area that is astounding. Anyone who has used InDesign 2 knows it has a zillion palettes and tools. This book covers them all in great detail. I venture to say that you would be hard pressed to come up with a question about InDesign 2 that this book doesn't cover.

And they put their money where their collective mouth is. They laid out the entire 650 page book using InDesign 2. One of them used a Titanium Powerbook running OS X and the other used Windows. A nice demo of its true cross-platform capabilities.

I was particularly impressed by how they showed the differences in results you get when performing a task (such as transforming the contents within a path), depending on which options are selected. This is the best reference book on InDesign I've seen. I like the Adobe Classroom in a Book, but wouldn't use it as my handy reference on how to do some little obscure thing.

I didn't realize how powerful the drawing tools in InDesign are until I read this book. And I didn't understand the difference between downsampling and subsampling (for exporting as a PDF), but they explain it well.

There is a nice section on managing long documents, their tables of contents and indices.

Rating:
Summary: Who knew?
Review: Who knew that a computer software manual could be so well written? So easy to use? So agreeable to read? So helpful? Kvern and Blatner write in such a way that beginners won't be awed and old hands won't be bored. Step by step explanations are engagingly presented along with examples and easy to follow graphics, and the layout makes it simple to go back and find just the needed shortcut, for example, when you've forgotten. All of these aspects mean that the book is really great for learning about InDesign, and retaining that knowledge, plus enjoy it at the same time.
This book is good for those just learning InDesign, those who've been using it for years and want to improve workflow or learn some cool tricks, those who like to curl up in bed with a good book, and those who need an ID reference manual.