Product Description

Tired of having your creative process held up as you wait for your computer to "think" (i.e., render)? Wait no longer! Whether you're a broadcast pro, marketing specialist, or Web designer, if you work with video, you'll welcome the dramatically accelerated 2D and 3D rendering afforded by the brand-new After Effects 6.0 ($699, Standard Edition; $999, Professional Edition). Here to help you dive right into Adobe's motion-graphics and effects powerhouse is Adobe After Effects 6.0 Classroom in a Book. The team at Adobe has thoroughly revised the best-selling previous edition to cover all that's new in this upgrade. Designed around a single complex project that's broken down into manageable lessons, this book-and-CD package mimics a real-world workflow--but one you tackle at your own pace! The CD contains all the lesson files needed to complete the lessons.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #894303 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

From the Back Cover
Tired of having your creative process held up as you wait for your computer to think (i.e., render)? Wait no longer! Whether you're a broadcast pro, marketing specialist, or Web designer, if you work with video, you'll welcome the dramatically accelerated 2D and 3D rendering afforded by the brand-new After Effects 6.0 ($699, Standard Edition; $999, Professional Edition). Here to help you dive right into Adobe's motion-graphics and effects powerhouse is Adobe After Effects 6.0 Classroom in a Book. The team at Adobe has thoroughly revised the best-selling previous edition to cover all that's new in this upgrade. Designed around a single complex project that's broken down into manageable lessons, this book-and-CD package mimics a real-world workflow-but one you tackle at your own pace! The CD contains all the lesson files needed to complete the lessons.

About the Author

The Adobe Creative Team of designers, writers, and editors has extensive, real world knowledge of Adobe products. They work closely with the Adobe product development teams and Adobe's Instructional Communications team to come up with creative, challenging, and visually appealing projects to help both new and experienced users get up to speed quickly on Adobe software products.

Customer Reviews

A thorough tutorial of the After Effects software.
A tutorial driven book whereas the student completes 11 lessons total with the end goal of creating an 18 second movie playable for either television or web. (Note: This book is compatible with either the "Macintosh" or Windows" version.)

These lessons are presented in a procedure-like fashion so ultimately the student learns this program with his or her "hands" rather than by verbal instruction or explanation. Each lesson is thorough and complete in teaching the student how to import various formats, manipulate them, animate, transform and composite them into a coherent animation. Also covered are lens flare effects, text effects, and adjusting live action footage. Ultimately, this book is quite competent in teaching all of the above in a step-by-step manner. Each lesson takes about a half-hour to an hour to do so if you are motivated you can burn through this entire book in a fast weekend.

My animation experience is primarily with Macromedia FLASH so I figured that when I opened up the "After Effects" manual it would all come to me in a "whooshing epiphany". This was not the case since "After Effects" is quite rich in content and complexity and it requires lots of practice and detail driven tutorials to really grasp this program. Subsequently, this book provided me with the understanding and tutorials I needed to really learn this program

Not for the classroom
This book is for anything but the classroom. The material is too complex for new students. I used it in three sessions. I could not get over the stress of teaching it. My students found that AE is too hard. It seems that the writers ignored that people have short memories. They expected the readers to keep up with a long project, the subject of the book. I found that the Meyer books had a better approach.

Very good, but....
AE 6 is a revolution from 5.5, and I've only had it two days. This book is very well written and presented, and the examples and the project it has you create give a really good overview of the program.
BUT... Sadly, it barely touches on any of the amazing new capabilities of the program and is therefore pretty much redundant for experienced users. Far more useful and informative are the help files within the program itself - tutorials and examples of the new functions. I'd recommend this for new users only.