Adobe CS5 Design Premium – How To’s

If you have Adobe’s Creative Suite 5, this is a cool book for only $30.00 from Adobe. If you only have Photoshop CS5, save your money; as this 345 page book will have slightly less than fifty pages for you, and only eleven pages on Bridge. This is a CS5 Premium Suite book, folks.

This book gives you 100 Essential Techniques on the Premium Suite. It has eleven chapters, only one of which is dedicated to Photoshop CS5.

100 Essential Techniques on the Premium Suite The chapters are:

Getting started (setting up all your Preferences, workspaces, etc.,)
Working with Bridge,
Working with Photoshop,
Working with Illustrator,
Working withInDesign,
Working with Dreamweaver,
Flash Catalyst,
Working with Flash Professional,
Using multiple Applications with Maximum Efficiency,
Automating routine Tasks in SC5, and
Using the CS5 Live Services.

There is also a fifteen-page Index.

So what do I like about this book? The explanations are clear and concise. Tip number 48 explains how to export from InDesign to an epub document. I also like the tips on using ‘Bridge’ and ‘Content-Aware’ as well as the tip on 3-D Effects.

100 Essential Techniques on the Premium Suite The negatives that turned me off are why they didn’t use color illustrations in the book (see tip #23 attached.) Without color, the Before and After isn’t that defined. One could say that the book is only $30; what do you expect, color? I understand the cost-savings of black and white, but folks, you have to consider the audience here. You’re selling the book to people who paid $1,900.00 (retail) for ‘…Creative Premium Suite CS5;’ $30 is a miniscule price for them. Consider your audience and the presentation of the medium. Granted, the information is the same, but the presentation is the selling point.

I think color illustrations would have reached the intended audience (see #13 for Content-Aware and Panorama Fill) with more ‘pop’ and triggered the ‘buy me’ mental switch a little bit better. But, that’s only my opinion and ‘my’ mental switch.

And before you ask, I don’t own CS5 Design Premium, I’m still on InDesign3.