Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies product reviews

I am not a great reader of manuals if they count to more than 5 pages in English. If I want to read a novel I will go check out the Books section for something I can handle. This is made a hundred times more likely if the manual is in digital format or if it's not so much a manual as an index of places to go look for answers online. Both are the case with the suite's manual which is on the install discs. So I was really happy to have a chance to get my hands on this book.
I have been a fan of the "...for Dummies" series since I first saw one years ago and since then have read a few of them at the local library, but as usual, the best ones are always out and booked up well in advance so I just don't bother trying for most of the better ones that apply to my needs. Being one of the faceless masses of "low income earners" puts me in a position of not really being able to buy them, despite how great the value for money is.
Having had a play with the creative suite before I got this book, I had some ideas on how it all worked, but I was really impressed to find literally hundreds of neat new tricks I wouldn't have thought of in this excellent reference book.
From the most basic of basics right through to some of the more advanced tools and tricks, this book covers all of the applications found in the CS3 Design bundle, and gives you helpful hints, areas of caution (warnings), and even ideas and information of how to integrate finished files from one application into another. It also gives you some background on some of the less-famous parts of the suite, such as Version Cue and Bridge, which may be of great importance to professionals who are just starting to explore the concept of a family of fully-integrated media applications.
I have had a fair bit of experience with most of the applications in this suite, or at least, their earlier versions, but I found it really helpful when I was trying to get to grips with "InDesign" because I have had very little hands-on time with this application. Even though I still wouldn't say I really know what I am doing with it, I now at least know enough to see where I need more detailed guidance, and where the basics are enough to know for now.
All in all, This isn't the cheapest book you can get to teach you stuff about this suite, but it sure is one of the easiest and most resourceful that I have come across. If you are a novice, you should have this on your bookshelf, or better yet, within arm's reach of your computer desk. I suspect it will be quite a while before I have nothing to learn from this book, and even then I think I will be keeping it handy to freshen my memory now and again. Looked at as a long-term resource, it's just so amazingly affordable! Well worth saving up for.