The fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn Adobe After Effects 7!

Classroom in a Book, the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, helps you learn the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Classroom in a Book offers what no other book or training program does--an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts.

Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book contains eleven lessons and a bonus DVD with lesson files. The book covers the basics of learning Adobe After Effects, and countless tips and techniques to help you quickly become an After Effects artist. You'll get thorough training in digital video effects and production as well as learn about After Effects 7.0's new features, including motion tracking, powerful animation and keyframing controls, HDR color support, network rendering, and more. You can follow the book from start to finish or choose only those lessons that interest you.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 15 Ratings

Average Tutorial from Adobe - 2007-04-05
Reviewer Rating:
Actually this is about what I expected from Adobe. It's a basic instruction book for After Effects 7 that shows a beginner some of the mechanics of the program. The lessons pull the reader through the steps needed to produce the required results without much explanation.

As another reviewer noted, the examples aren't that good. Watching the sample movies before doing the lessons, you find yourself saying "And why would I want to produce something like that?" Or maybe "It takes over an hour just for that 10 second cheezy cartoon?"

After Effects is an extremely powerful program that's used by many professionals in countless video applications. Watch any TV program and you'll surely see the results of what After Effects can do. Much additional instruction beyond this official training book from Adobe, that you have to pay extra for, is obviously required to get the most out of After Effects.

I just got 2 more books,"After Effects" by Fahs & Weinman and "Creative After Effects" by Taylor. I'll see how they compare with Adobe's book.

Update: After reading "Creative After Effects" by Angie Taylor, this Adobe Classroom in a Book looks like a Pulitzer prize winner in comparison. Don't even think about wasting your time on Taylor's so-called "book".

A must-have if you own After Effects!!!! - 2007-04-01
Reviewer Rating:
I sat for a solid week trying to make sense out of the confusing owner's manual for After Effects, and never got anywhere. After just the first "lesson" in this book, I already knew my way around in AE smoothly, and then with each lesson, I was accelerating rapidly with knowledge. The official AE owner's manual will definitely be tossed into a dark corner for a long time.... this Classroom In A Book should be listed as a manditory requirement for learning how to use AE. It is very easy to understand and takes you through some very cool steps to help you create videos like the pros. Without this book, I would still have no clue as to how to function inside AE.....If you want to learn how to use AE in a flash, then you HAVE to buy this book!!!!! I recommend it 100%!!!!!

Great for learning After Effects 7.0 - 2007-11-29
Reviewer Rating:
I recently made the financial plunge and bought Adobe's Production Studio Premium which includes After Effects 7.0 - a motion graphics and compositing program I feel necessary for any serious production company. Though quite good at Premiere Pro, and decent at Photoshop and 3ds Max, I did not know how to use After Effects at all so I bought a couple books to try to learn - this being one of them.

At first glance the lesson projects appear un-impressive, particularly if only looking at the pictures in the book. However, as you work through them and watch the finished videos you realize that you are learning valuable techniques and skills that you can apply to your own work. They have you import and work with photoshop, illustrator, and video files (included on DVD) so you get used to working with a variety of media just like in a production environment. The book really helps you step by step learn to work with this program in a variety of ways and is exactly what a new AE user needs.
It covers quite a bit of stuff including things new to version 7.
It's well worth the money and I recommend it to anyone who needs help getting started with this program.

I guess my only complaint was that it didn't do a lesson on some of the motion graphics like I see on national network commercials (loopy, ribbon, bubbly graphics) they always fling onto the screen, but to be fair this program can do so very much there's probably no way to have a book so inclusive that it goes from the very beginning to that level all in a single book. Also, the .mp3 file that you are supposed to use with the lesson 1 project will not import into my After Effects without crashing it.

Errors on the accompanying DVD make it difficult to learn - 2007-10-08
Reviewer Rating:
In all fairness, I've only gone through the first lesson and already I'm enraged at Adobe. You're given several files to import from the accompanying DVD, and one of them is 3 seconds long. The book refers to it as 3 seconds long. Strugle struggle struggle and you can't make it work like the sample movie. Now I open up the adobe finished example and lo and behold, the file is supposed to be THIRTY seconds long. I have a little experience and was able to create a new file of approriate length but real beginners will tear their hair out over something like this. Problem 2- a supplied mp3 file won't load (though all my other mp3 files will). Had to convert it to wav to import it. These kinds of defects just shouldn't happen in a teach your-self environment.

Bottom line is at least the first lesson is not a lesson in how to use After Effects 7 but how to get totally frustrated. Can't wait to see lesson 2. If you are looking for a smooth, easy way to learn After Effects 7, look elsewhere.

good intro, one flaw - 2007-07-11
Reviewer Rating:
good, basic intro to a professional tool. while it might not "be for beginners" as some have said, neither is after effects. the one problem i have with the book is that several of the lessons require effects that only come bundled with the Pro edition of AE7. given that the title of the book does not mention Pro, the authors should probably have taken more care to avoid using features limited to the Pro edition.

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