I am a non-designer. Between you and me I've had no idea what I'm doing lo these last 2 1/2 years that I've been editor of my User Group's newsletter. Sometimes I'll have to deal with advertisers and printers and they'll start throwing around terms like "linescreen," "halftone," "moire patterns," and "rotogravure." Actually I've never heard that last one used in anything but the song "Easter Parade," and this book defines it.
Oh sure, I *thought* I knew what I was doing, at least well enough to get by. I had a copy of PageMaker and a few hours of "show-me" from the previous editor. But after reading this book, I now know that I really didn't have a clue how to do this properly. And it's too bad I didn't get this book earlier, because now we've got a layout editor on board who's an actual pro! Oh well.
This book is aimed squarely at people like me, people who have the responsibility of creating flyers, newsletters, pamphlets, advertisements, etc., but who really don't know much about it. It is not at all condescending when it begins at the very beginning, describing the very basics of printing such as resolution, dots, the different kinds of printers, the different kinds of print-shops, and what questions to ask in order to get the best results.
It proceeds to explain the different types of graphics. Every wonder what the real difference between a BMP and a JPG are? It's in here. Along with PNG, TIF, EPS, WMF, and just about every other graphic type used. Also, the distinction between vector images and raster images is explained.
The focus of the book tends to be on Adobe products, which is alright for me since I've been using Adobe PageMaker to do the newsletter, but if you're a QuarkXPress users, it may put you off a bit. And if you're trying to do newsletters using a word processor such as Word or WordPerfect, this book will set you straight. In fact, if you're doing that, this is just the book for you since it will show you all of the limitations of that approach.
This book isn't necessarily for the recent buyer of a scanner who's just looking for ways to make their photo scans look good. It's probably overkill for that, since one chapter alone covers the essentials for great scans. It is full of useful tips, formulas, and rules of thumb that will prove replaceable in my library.
One of the appendices at the end of the book has quizzes for each chapter, and some of the questions are based on theoretical projects. This is all very helpful, but I didn't see this until I reached the end of the book. It might've been useful if the end of each chapter would have mentioned taking the available quiz. This is my only complaint.
Did I mention that this book is comprehensive. It covers everything! My brain sorta hurts from all the new information I've just received. And the embarrassing thing is that I should have known this information before I ever became editor.
