InDesign CC: 2014 Release for Windows and Macintosh (Visual Quickstart Guide)

Pretty good book, although the index isn't that great. To wit: some of the topics I needed to find were not listed under their obvious names, but under more obscure titles, or not at all.I made a mistake when I ordered the book because it is for ID CC, whereas I have ID CS6. I don't think this is a big problem, and have the sense that once you reach a certain level of comfort, you can figure out any differences between them.I haven't tried the electronic tutorials, but have no reason to doubt other reviewers who rave about them.I think it's a good buy and I don't feel I need any other book to master CS 6.

This book just is not doing it for me. A lot of the places it says things should be, are not there on my InDesign cloud interface, and the layout of the book is more of a reference guide than a book, but since many of the reference guides are wrong, I would prefer a different book. I am having to use this in a class, but I do not think I will buy more of this series again and instead will purchase the actual ADOBE classroom books instead. I have used them in the past and they seem to be more thorough and correct.

A great reference book for inDesign that I always keep at my desk.I got tired of googling how-to's for things in inDesign and purchased this book instead. The problem with googling is that the person who is answering the questions you have no clue if they even know what you are talking about. You could spend 30 minutes searching the internet or just a few minutes reading a section of this book. Clear instructions, clear pictures, all-around great book to own if you do a lot of work in inDesign.

Do you learn best by doing hands-on tutorials? If so, this is NOT the book for you, because there isn't a tutorial to be had from beginning to end.Or do you like to build a foundation first by learning every possible detail about every single tool, command, function, etc etc etc? If so, this book still has too many issues. I could not, in good conscience, give it more than two stars.I wanted to do one, but the book does have reference information, so there's that.The QuickStart guides don't have the same structure as the Adobe "Classroom in a Book" series at all, and only you can decide if that's an thing that is at all workable for you or not. It does depend to some extent on your learning style. The CiB series always starts with a tutorial that provides an overall example of something you can achieve by using that particular software. The problem, of course, is that you're thrown in at the deep end. And if you don't really know anything about the software yet, you'll be going through the steps it takes to get to the final product without knowing what you're doing or why you're doing it. QS doesn't do this. There's a reason why there are no lesson files to download. You're not doing tutorials or really even looking at finished examples. You're going through each and every conceivable detail about each area of the software and exactly what it can do. There are separate chapters on setup, text color, fills, strokes, and effects, points and paths, imported graphics, and text effects before it even gets to pages and books, for example. You'll learn each little piece, and there are some anecdotes about when the author worked in print publishing, but there's no real sense of how or why it all fits together. And that's a problem.On the whole, I tend to be closer to the second type of learner,but any kind of lesson plan has got to have SOME kind of example of hands-on use of the software in order to create a final product. The user NEEDS to be able to see what this program can do and what they need to know in order to get there. I do think that it's important to know at least something about what each tool/command/window/tab group is and what it does before just jumping into tutorials. That having been said, there are also very good reasons to have tutorials and results-based lessons, and I'm not sure I've ever clearly realized this before trying to get this book. Going through every single aspect of every single detail in this program without a sense of how it all fits into a larger picture gets to be a really tedious activity. It's kind of like slogging on through an endless journey with no way to either see or visualize the endpoint.So is this book worth getting? The Adobe CiB series is better, and it's just as easy to buy. However... several people have been saying that they've run into some difficulties with downloading the lesson files that are supposed to be included with CiB, and that there is no tech support at all to help with solving the issue. So that's something to keep in mind too. There are advantages to not needing lesson files, but not enough of them to put yourself through the incredible tedium of this book. Maybe if you understand you're not going to be getting any actual tutorials or real examples of a final product created with InDesign, and you're willing to go outside the book for those things (there are certainly a lot of tuts out there), then this would be an okay book. But it doesn't really work to deliver every imaginable detail about everything with NO sense of how it all fits together.

I have just started into this book, but so far I love it. I started from page 1, because I have never used InDesign before. I have seen it used, but I never used it myself. The book so far is very clearly written and it goes over every detail. What I love are the QR code videos. When you can't quite get what the author/instructor is trying to say, these little videos come in very handy. I also love that there is an electronic version of the book.

At this point I own a Vistual Quick Start Guide for all of my major programs. I like how they are written and I find them very useful. In general, they look at each program in a similar way and allow me to get my work done and learn new things extra fast.

This is a poorly organized and referenced book. It is intended as a guide to take the beginner through to competence with InDesign CC, but it lacks the clarity and continuity do much more than infuriate its user. Many functions of the program do not even appear in the index, so reference is left up to chance encounter if there is any reference at all. One example is "Presets." Presets are mentioned several times within the text but are never defined nor explained and there is no index citation for Presets. This occurs repeatedly within the book. A terribly garbled section is that on importing text from other sources. As an author I tend to use Wordperfect as my main text generator. The program is versatile enough to produce output readable editable by Word, Quark,and other programs. But the section on bringing in text doesn't even mention Wordperfect nor does it suggest methods of preserving editing from any source other than Word.It even lacks clarity on what the program is doing when it produces its own de novo formatting. It would be easy but tedious to rant on for several pages about the faults of Cohen's book that I uncovered in transferring a 400 page novel from a WordPerfect/Quark document into an InDesign one. There must be better guides!

A great reference manual with clear step-by-step instructions. As a beginner to using the program, and self-teaching, I find it thoroughly explains each area I am unsure of in enough detail that I do not feel intimidated. I am extremely satisfied, and would recommend even to those that may be farther along in its capabilities than I am thus far.

recommended by study course... online tutorials easier to use... a good starting point though

fine!JL

As an eBooks the diagrams were small and could not be enlarged with my Kindle settings. The book has a lot of great information and I look forward to using it with the program.

as expected

It's very informative