Adobe After Effects CC Classroom in a Book

A big plus here is that this book is an Adobe product and, like everything from Adobe, all their "stuff" is excellent! However, there is a problem with the illustrations. The screenshots replicate the very dark screens, said screens being excellent when working on a computer but which reproduce quite poorly on the printed page. Add to this that some of those screenshots are so miniscule that making out elements is nigh impossible. Of course, if you're seated in front of your computer while going through the lessons you will eventually be able to "interpolate" what's on the printed page, something that really shouldn't be necessary. After all, illustrations are meant to illustrate, not confuse or, in some cases, be almost illegible.There is definitely a learning curve with this product which is hardly a surprise considering its complexity, which of course is the key to After Effects having, well, so many after effects available for your videos. So with the exception of the illustrations/screenshots, I would have given the book five stars.

I would recommend this for beginners or near beginners of After Effects. The lessons go step by step and leave nothing to the guessing. You will never get lost in this book unless you stay up until 2 AM with your eyes half closed. Each chapter is assembled in a step by step instruction of how to complete a project from start to finish. Every click and entry is perfectly outlined for you. The chapters add more and more to your knowledge and also make shortcuts and clicks become second nature. The files include everything you need; nothing is missing.I don't recommend this for a seasoned veteran as it will be remedial in most cases.If you're unsure about using After Effects this book will throw you in the pool and provide lots of floaties for you to hang on to while you learn to swim.

After Effects is a complicated program and I think this book does about as good as it gets for stepping your through this step-by-step. You can download the files as indicated in the front part of the book. I think it will take more than one pass using the book to get a good feel for the program since there are so many options. I'm using the first pass as just an overview and following along exactly as the authors have done. On the second time, I'll explore other options and experiment with the chapter concept to get a better understanding of the techniques. They are some updated files where a few corrections have been made but I find the instructions are surprisingly accurate for this step-by-step approach.

Great book series! I used this series years ago when I was just learning the graphics business and they have not lost their learning appeal. If you want to learn a specific program, buy this series. You can't go wrong. Also the help files so that you can work along with the lessons are all online and you download them. Better than having to insert a CD, which most computers now a days don't come with anyway. For that I give it 4****.

What is their not to like about any book coming from Adobe! They totally rock! I became a professional Graphic Designer without going to school from it and make excellent money freelancing and not prepping to shoot my movie, Killing Chocolate this June 2015, before starting Film School this Fall. This book is used in my film school, which is ranked #14 in USA; in addition to being used at the College (Sanford-Brown College / International Academy of Design & Technology) I currently work in with students doing amazing work...CMack

I purchased this book close to 6 mos ago, thought it would be a great help to get me up to speed on my new Adobe After Effects program, as I'm an old animation editor with over 20 yrs studio experience I thought it would be fun to learn to do great graphics. Got to chapter 4 and the snapping feature completely dissolved my confidence. I've tried getting every patch, every update, and I still cannot get the snapping feature to work on my system. This book assumes everything works as adobe expects. I tried the suggestion of using the Control button to temporarily enable the snapping feature to no avail. That was the only suggested help. Since lessons seem to be built one upon another my confidence in this Classroom In A Book is now nil. I put the book down and have NOT picked it up again. Guess I will learn the program I have and it's capabilities in my own tried and true fashion, -playing around with it!If everything works in your system, I'm sure the book is helpful. But any hiccup and suddenly it is worthless. In my experience most Adobe products generally require great work around skills!

Incredibly, the bulk of the lessons in this book are IDENTICAL to the bulk of the lessons in the CS6 book, which are IDENTICAL to the bulk of the lessons in the CS5 book. Seriously, Adobe -- none of your "certified" trainers have the skills to create new material?The only reason I'm giving the CC version 2 stars is that Adobe FINALLY replaced that awful flamingo video in their Rotoscoping chapter with video footage containing a foreground element that doesn't take all day to trace frame-by-frame. OMG, if I had to refine those spindly li'l bird legs one more time ...In short, this book is frankly good for people with little or no experience with After Effects; but if you're a seasoned user and have slogged through the CS5 or CS6 versions of this CIB, don't expect to find much more than a few pages of enlightenment.

It was a great read, I learned a lot about After effects through this book i'm glad I bought it. To be honest I like books better than something online which is the reason why I bought this. You don't need this book though you can self learn.

I purchased this book a week ago to learn AE with no prior experience. I absolutely LOVE this book, its detailed, precise and very well laid out. I'm on Lesson 5 as we speak and just taking 2 minutes out to review it because its SUCH a good book, and what i love mostly about it is that its FUN learning from this book. The exercises in the book result in some quite ugly videos BUT those ugly videos contain A LOT of things that you need to learn, so by the end of each lesson your video might be really rubbish looking but the point here isn't to make nice looking videos, its to learn, and this book does just that, it combines a lot of different exercises and effects in each lesson to cover a wide range of AE features.Highly recommended if your new to AE

Generally well laid out and easy to follow the lessons are a bit basic if you've already done the tutorials on the Adobe TV site.

Great!

good

I found the entire Classroom in a Book series really easy to follow and practically oriented. This one is no exception. I have these guides for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premier Pro and After Effects.