What This Book Is Not

If you’re in the market for a hot tips-and-tricks book, this isn’t it. It’s not a guide for wow-your-friends special effects, unless you consider it a special effect to get your job to print as expected. And, although this book demonstrates how to do some useful things in the most popular desktop publishing programs, it isn’t strictly a how-to book either. In fact, there’s quite a bit of how-not-to.

Are there any prerequisites for using this book? Only two, really. First, you should have basic proficiency with your computer and operating system, as well as the basics of InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. The other requirement is arguably more important: You should have a healthy curiosity about the printing process and a desire to build problem-free files.