Que’s On Demand Series Is Impressive

I had a chance to review the Photoshop CS3 and Flash CS3 Professional editions of the On Demand series, and I found them well-designed, full of good content and easy to read.

I am always pleased when I stumble upon a series of books that really helps my work: Ben Willmore’s Up To Speed series is one I really appreciate, and of course the Classroom In A Book series by Adobe sets the standard for official support publications for CS3 and related applications. I got my hands on a couple new examples of Que Publishing’s On Demand series, which I hadn’t heard about until now, and I was both impressed by the quality of the books and surprised that I had not heard of them before.

INFORMATION DESIGN

Ironically, I often find books about creative applications to be poorly designed, with few callouts or information graphics—even things as simple as keyboard shortcuts are found only in the text, with nothing to make them stand out. It drives me crazy and it’s often what makes a five-star book into a four-star book. The On Demand series goes beyond that with a page layout that’s easy to follow and digest. It helps that the book is a series of one-page techniques and there’s no need for long passages of text, but that doesn’t detract from the many things going for the layout:

• Every page has step-by-step instructions so you know at a single glance what to do
• Screenshots are large and always in full color
• Each step in the instructions is labeled on the screenshot, so you know where to do what the instructions ask for
• Tips and important notes are set aside in pullout boxes

I’d like to point out that these books are also in full color all the way through, which is another bonus for readers. I was reviewing another book along with these, and it’s in black and white with just 16 color plates—a big difference. I also noticed that the On Demand books were only $10 more than the other book, which I think was more than made up for by the quality of the paper and the full color printing.

WHAT’S THEIR NICHE?

There are a ton of Photoshop and Flash books out there, and it’s hard to find a book nowadays that does what no other book on the market can do. I won’t say that the On Demand books are totally original and their content has never been duplicated, but they have found a fairly original structure: they offer one-page breakdowns of Photoshop, Flash (and other) techniques on all aspects of the applications. Think of it as a cookbook: if you are wanting to use a particular filter effect or ActionScript snippet but aren’t sure how it’s done, you can look it up in the book and have a step-by-step recipe for making it happen. Here are a few sample sections from the Photoshop CS3 book:

• Using the Paint, Shape Drawing, and Eraser Tools
• Creating Layer and Channel Masks
• Getting Creative with Type
• Manipulating Images with Filters
• Automating Your Work with Actions
• Controlling Image Output
• Working with Automate Commands

And now here’s sample “recipes” from the section “Customizing The Way You Work”:

• Allocating Memory & Image Cache
• Working with Type
• Managing Libraries with the Preset Manager
• Customizing the Workspace
• Defining Shortcut Keys
• Creating a Customized User Interface

The content for these recipes is clear, concise, easy to follow and quite thorough: the page “Allocating Memory & Image Cache” explains mundane details such as what a cache level is, how much RAM is needed for a document, and the reason for not allocating 100% of total memory to Photoshop. What it does not do is specify the optimal settings, and this failure to give good recommendations is a problem for me because the first thing a user wants to know about something is the setting they’re supposed to have—”How much should I sharpen?” “What’s the best color settings?” “How should I set up the Magnetic Lasso tool so it’s not worthless?” You won’t find many answers like these here, which is understandable—many of these settings are subjective—but benchmarks would have been helpful nonetheless.

Another thing I would have hoped for is some more advanced tips and tricks. Most of the techniques described are basic procedures like creating masks or using filters. If you are looking for techniques that aren’t necessarily listed in the owner’s manual, you probably won’t find them in the On Demand series of books. The Flash CS3 Professional book is a good example of this: ActionScript is a big part of Flash, but it’s not really within the scope of the On Demand book so you won’t get any information on the language other than a few simple example of how it’s used—with almost no explanation of how the code examples actually work. This is a positive in a way, because you can’t write a successful book that is all things to all people, but a few advanced tricks sprinkled here and there may keep the books relevant to power users while helping novices see the great possibilities within these applications.

APPROVED FOR ACE

One of the coolest things about the On Demand series is that reading them provides excellent training for the Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) tests. When you come across a technique that needs to be known for a segment of the ACE tests, an icon will appear as well as the applicable segment numbers. I found this very illuminating because I never knew what the ACE tests entailed. The On Demand books have a list of test segments in the back, so it’s easy to know what is required during testing and what pages of the book are especially helpful. I think it’s a great example of hindsight on the publisher’s part to include this information—I am wanting to earn my ACE certification this year, and I will be using these books to bone up as best I can. One wouldn’t expect these books to be ACE learning tools, but they are.

CONCLUSION

The Photoshop CS3 and Flash CS3 Professional books are practically the same in terms of quality and content—very good. I would recommend these books to any Photoshop or Flash novice or intermediate user. Advanced users can get some good out of them as well, but more likely they will sit on the shelf until needed for a particular detail or perhaps as a study guide for the ACE tests. That being said, there’s not much more the On Demand books need to do in order to get a five-star rating.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 On Demand
Andy Anderson, Steve Johnson, Perspection Inc.
Published by Que
List Price: $39.99

Adobe Flash CS3 Professional On Demand
Andy Anderson, Steve Johnson, Perspection Inc.
Published by Que
List Price: $39.99