Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One For Dummies

by Jennifer Smith

The perennial Adobe Creative Suite bestseller―fully updated for Adobe CS5 Featuring eight books in one, this All-in-One For Dummies guide covers the key features and tools that you need to know in order to understand how to use each individual program within the Adobe Creative Suite―InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash―to its fullest potential. Within the nearly 1,000 pages, you’ll find creative inspiration as well as tips and techniques to sharpen you productivity. Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One For Dummies is a premium resource on all Adobe Creative Suite 5 can do for you.

1008 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2010

About the author

I’m Jennifer Smith – a designer, educator, and author. I’ve written more than one dozen books on digital imaging and Web publishing, including the recently published Photoshop CS5 Digital Classroom, Illustrator CS5 Digital Classroom and the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium for Dummies and Wireframing and Prototyping with Expression Blend Sketchflow. I’ve done extensive work for corporations such as Adobe Systems and Microsoft, and last year traveled more than 100,000 miles visiting clients in Europe, Asia, Africa, and all around the United States. I deliver training and consulting for Fortune 100 companies, universities, and many independent software vendors.

I work extensively on designing and creating interactive applications and sites using Expression Blend and other Expression Studio applications. You can find many of my training guides and videos on Microsoft.com. I’m also the co-founder of the American Graphics Institute.

Reviews

[Fanny Fae · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love that this huge tome is devoted to the Adobe Creative Suite 5. (I currently have a copy of CS5.5) My biggest issue with this and other similar books on Adobe CS5 is that they provide little if any information on Adobe Premiere Pro, the non-linear film / video editing portion of the suite.

A note about CS5.*: You will want to have some manuals like this on-hand.Adobe loves to squeeze as much money out of its users as possible, so resis as long as you can the temptation to "upgrade". If you do, you will have to pay a yearly subscription fee on top of what you are charged for the software in order to use Adobe's Creative Suite. My recommendation is to hang on to this one, which I believe is the very last version that was issued on DVD ROM that you can actually own free and clear. Unfortunately, this is the way many software packages are going - and PC's aren't even including DVD / CD ROM drives anymore.

[Al Lock · Rating 3 out of 5]

At one time, Adobe had the premier application in each of the areas covered in this book - and they still do in a number of areas. If you are a Creative Suite user, you will find that this book may give you a few tips and will be a good resource to remind yourself of the basics. If you use a portion of the Suite but rarely use the other parts, this can be a good reference when you need those parts that you aren't familiar with.
I picked up a few things in the InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop sections. The Acrobat section is just basics, in my opinion. Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks are all obsolete from my point of view, so I didn't find those sections of much use at all.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Being new to the Creative Suite software, I thought this would be the good usual "For Dummies" tutorial of how to get into the basics. It's not. It really assumes you know a lot about the software. For example, going to the InDesign section, there's really not a tutorial - it is very high level and gives you an explanation along the lines of "this button will do so-and-so" without telling you what "so-and-so" is used for and why you would want to consider this option or not. For the novice InDesign user, this is beyond frustrating and a waste of time and money. If you are familiar with previous versions of the software, it should be right up your alley.

[Leah Webber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read for people who need to flip and choose their knowledge. Need to bvuy this one so I have it on hand for when I can't remember how to do things.