[Tinocap]

I’ve not used a DTP package for about 10 years but bought and read Terry Rydberg’s Exploring InDesign CS2 (ISBN 1-4180-1432-X) last week and it’s been very easy to follow and looked better than the others I saw in the shop (there must have been 10). It’s black and white with a colour central section, but is very well set out and comes with a resources CD. It was about 10 pounds cheaper than the Adobe Classroom books. It’s designed as a course and I think you might find some parts quite basic if you’re used to PageMaker but is clever in that it introduces you to keyboard shortcuts and then takes away prompts so that you’re forced to remember them. I found some parts were familiar but it wasn’t at all patronising and it emphasises style as well as just the program. It’s 350 pages and if you’ve got time to plough through the whole thing and you don’t mind not flicking between chapters then I think it’s great. There are a lot of projects to do as you go through. It’s definitely not the kind of book that just goes through all the tools and the menu functions in order in the kind of abstract way that some books did.
I think there’s a Scott Kelby book as well (they didn’t sell it in the bookshop I was in), which if it’s anything like his Photoshop book should be good, if you can get past his sense of humour.
Tino.