Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book [With CDROM]

by Adobe Creative Team and Creative Team Adobe

Provides twelve lessons that cover the basics of Adobe After Effects 7.0, including animating text, working with masks, using 3D effects, and color correction. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321385497
• ISBN13: 9780321385499
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Adobe Press
• Length: 456 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great for learning After Effects 7.0

I recently made the financial plunge and bought Adobe's Production Studio Premium which includes After Effects 7.0 - a motion graphics and compositing program I feel necessary for any serious production company. Though quite good at Premiere Pro, and decent at Photoshop and 3ds Max, I did not know how to use After Effects at all so I bought a couple books to try to learn - this being one of them. At first glance the lesson projects appear un-impressive, particularly if only looking at the pictures in the book. However, as you work through them and watch the finished videos you realize that you are learning valuable techniques and skills that you can apply to your own work. They have you import and work with photoshop, illustrator, and video files (included on DVD) so you get used to working with a variety of media just like in a production environment. The book really helps you step by step learn to work with this program in a variety of ways and is exactly what a new AE user needs. It covers quite a bit of stuff including things new to version 7. It's well worth the money and I recommend it to anyone who needs help getting started with this program. I guess my only complaint was that it didn't do a lesson on some of the motion graphics like I see on national network commercials (loopy, ribbon, bubbly graphics) they always fling onto the screen, but to be fair this program can do so very much there's probably no way to have a book so inclusive that it goes from the very beginning to that level all in a single book. Also, the .mp3 file that you are supposed to use with the lesson 1 project will not import into my After Effects without crashing it.

A must-have if you own After Effects!!!!

I sat for a solid week trying to make sense out of the confusing owner's manual for After Effects, and never got anywhere. After just the first "lesson" in this book, I already knew my way around in AE smoothly, and then with each lesson, I was accelerating rapidly with knowledge. The official AE owner's manual will definitely be tossed into a dark corner for a long time.... this Classroom In A Book should be listed as a manditory requirement for learning how to use AE. It is very easy to understand and takes you through some very cool steps to help you create videos like the pros. Without this book, I would still have no clue as to how to function inside AE.....If you want to learn how to use AE in a flash, then you HAVE to buy this book!!!!! I recommend it 100%!!!!!

Great Tutorial

I opened this book with 2 years experience in Final Cut Pro, Motion and just a cursory intro to After Effects so I can't speak to how a beginner would experience it. However, I have found that doing the hands-on tutorial has upped my skills in the program vastly. Last night I was able to begin a 3d project of a scope I could not have imagined doing a year ago. It is not the end-all be-all because no one book could cover all the nuances in a powerful program such as After Effects. But, that said, if you do the lessons, it will push your skills forward and that's what it's all about, right?

A great beginning book

I have have AE Pro 6 on my editing pc for 2 years now. Using it for s few films i did. I found it very difficult to learn. Flash forward I upgrade to AE7 pro and love it! I got this book at the same time and its been my bible. Very easy to follow and great usable tutorials. I highly recommend this book for new AE users!

Very nice upgrade...highly recommended for beginners.

Sometimes, I think a lot of these books just slap a new cover on their publication and make minimal edits to the same recycled material. This book really does cover AE 7 in a complete way for beginners and beyond. I have been working in AE for a couple of years now and I also found it to be pretty handy for featuring the updates in AE7. IMHO, this is the best book of the series...I can think of at least 3 ways this book has changed my work habits. It is clear, logical and well laid out. The only way I wouldn't recommend it is to try to use it with older versions of AE...there really isn't much backward compatibility here. Emphasis is on how to use the newest features, especially the Adobe Bridge and the presets, which is why I recommend it to those who are just getting started in AE.