If you like to learn by doing I highly recommend this book. The author writes in a very clear understandable manner that even those who have never used a page layout program will be able to follow. You won't have to worry about him assuming that you already know some piece of info that you need to do the projects. He starts each chapter by giving an introduction to the chapter and then walks you through actual projects that you can then do as you work through the book. The projects can be downloaded from an address provided in the book. It may not be as complete as some other books on Indesign, but it will give you a good foundation upon which to build further if you so choose. If I had known how much I was going to like this book and I would have paid the extra money and bought the color edition. I have another book on Indesign that I am also working on that covers every bell and whistle, but to be honest the authors are not as clear in their writing, and they often assume that you already know things that they haven't even covered yet. I am really glad I started with Chris Botello's book first.

I'm glad I read the reviews for this book. How stupid to print a book in black and white when teaching a graphics program that involoves color. It stopped me from making a purchase. I'll now look for the colored teacher's edition.

A really good book in general, Chris Botello is an excellent author on the Adobe CS2 product line, and I thought his book on Illustrator in this same series was a 5-star must-have book. This particular edition is not published in color, so for some of the illustrations, I had to take off my reading glasses and get my nose up on the book to understand the distinction he was making, and no doubt it would be much clearer in color. My big beef with this book is that the examples were not nearly as well tested as they were for the Illustrator book. I found several errors in the examples throughout the book, and apparently this publisher does not have a site for errata (or if they do, I didn't find it), something I'm used to seeing for programming books. Additionaly, I'm guessing he worked with a Beta edition of the product, since at least one methodology (guidelines on a page versus a spread) appears to have changed since the book went to press. You really do learn the product with this author, he explains WHY he has you take a particular step instead of just telling you to do it, and on the whole I'm pretty excited about this book.

The teachers edition is a better purchase (though a lot more expensive) becasue the teachers edition is in color and comes with a CD for the lessons. Yet when I was doing my first book by them it was illustrator. Very frustrating at times that they would tell you to to pick such and such a colored item and compare it to the example in the book...but the book was in grey scale.

So go for the added expense and get the color edition / teachers edition. You will be very glad you did. The used section is a great bargain.

The lessons are clear and concise. They teach you on several levels. They explain what you are going to learn, a 1-2 page explaining deffinitions and the what and why of tools used. Then lessons to show what they just explained and a round up at the end with deffinitions, telling you what you learned.

Besides the color gripe my only other concerns were the book was very short on having you use 'shortcut keys' and when it came to brushes and pen tools, it showed you how to create brushes, but seemed to gloss over making pen strokes (which are fascinating in themselves and learned how to do that in a round about way from a magazine article on illustrator. Ideas on how to get that rough and tumble kind of pen stroke made). I have tried several books and this seems to be the one that catches on and keeps in my head for using the programs.