Product Description

Visual effects and motion graphics pros of all stripes - from broadcast professionals to VFX supervisors to Web designers who need to produce occasional video segments - will welcome the dramatically accelerated features provided in the brand-new After Effects CS4. This best-selling book has been revised to cover all that's new in this upgrade: the ability to import 3D layers from Photoshop; the Cartoon effect that converts live-action footage into stylized imagery; Adobe Device Central CS4, which lets you preview and test animations for mobile devices, and more. Designed around a single complex project that’s broken down into manageable lessons, this book-and-DVD package mimics a real-world workflow - but one that readers tackle at their own pace. The DVD contains all the lesson files and footage readers need to complete the lessons.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11251 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780321573834
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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

Useful Book, but not the best
I have Classroom in a Book for 6.0, 7.0 and now CS4.
It's usefull if you are new to After Effects by taking you by the hand to show you how to use this powerful program which is both difficult and complex.

It is very much just an updated version of the 7.0 book with a few new lessons on the new CS4 content (ie..Cartoon Effect).

Honestly, the best Classroom in a Book of the three is the one for 6.0. If you want to really learn After Effects in a way that deals with more complex motion graphics and compositing in a project that is far more impressive, I recommend it, even though it's written for an older version. The later books just come up short in comparison.

Nonetheless, if you just bought CS4 and have no clue where to start, this book will prove useful to you.

clear interesting lessons
I found this book to be very useful. The lessons were clear and not too difficult to follow. I particuarly enjoyed the distorting objects with the puppet pin tool lesson and also the building 3D objects/enviroments which opened up a whole area of After Effects that I have now explored in more depth. I used this book in conjunction with a beginners class in After Effects and found it a very good foundation.

Disappointed
I'm disappointed. I've read the entire book and everything did not work as advertised. I understand that After Effects is a very complex product. I think the book accomplished its mission, which was to provide an introduction to the product. I especially enjoyed the chapters on animating text, multimedia presentations, and layers. Also, the chapters on color correction, 3d effects, and particle systems were very good.

But I had interesting problems along the way, to say the least. Chapter 3 crashed my machine repeatedly. I think the interaction between Adobe Bridge and After Effects was causing memory access violations and services started crashing. Then the blue screen occurred. This problem is reproducible. In Chapter 5 you create a PDF file with a movie in it, and configure the file for clip notes. That crashed Adobe Reader, even after I loaded the most recent version of that product. Chapter 7 does not perform exactly as the book's description. The mask hides the movie, and a white screen appears where the movie is supposed to appear. Even their AEP file in the End_Project_File directory is incorrect and shows a white screen where the movie is supposed to appear. And the movie in their Finished_Product is blank as well. And Chapter 9 crashed my machine with the blue screen.

Four out of fourteen chapters caused problems on my machine, which is a pretty new machine (less than 1 year old). So I gave the book a 70% rating. I hate wasting time, especially considering that it takes alot of time just to figure out how these products work when they work properly. When they don't work as advertised, I end up wasting time trying to figure out if I've done something wrong.

And even though I had problems using the book and the product, I have to say, "Is there anything better?" So it's not like you are wasting your money. Just make sure you hit Ctrl-S alot in the chapters I've identified.