We thought the deals were getting good with 20% off CS5.5 upgrades and Lightroom 3 for half price – but now we have two incredible new coupon codes to get 50% off purchases of the full CS5.5 Web Premium or CS5.5 Production Premium suites!

Web Premium is one of Adobe’s top-selling suites, containing Photoshop Extended, Illus­trator, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro, Flash Professional, and four other major applications.

Production Premium is the package more focused on video production – with both Premiere Pro and After Effects, but also includes Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, and three others.

And now, the latest full Creative Suite 5.5 versions of either suite are available for half their regular prices to customers in the U.S., Canada (excluding Quebec), and Mexico – when purchased through the Adobe Store… but you must have these coupons activated:

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We’ve seen a few sneak peeks already of what Adobe’s working on now in Photoshop – but this new one is the best to date, it’s pretty incredible… They don’t say which release these capabilities could make it in (or when), but presumably it’s Photoshop CS6.

This new demonstration takes the much-praised concept of Content-Aware Fill that was introduced in Creative Suite 5 and carries it much further with new Content-Aware Move, Extend, and Patch tool features. It’s hard to explain but you can see how it works with the 2½ minute video below.

Last month we actually put together a guide to getting the best results with Photoshop CS5′s Content-Aware Fill, but these new tools clearly make the work much faster, simpler, and more flexible… and dare we say magical (see the “before and after” screengrabs below the video).

See more advanced features of Photoshop Content-Aware technology. Straight from Photoshop Senior Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes, this video shares how to seamlessly move, extend, remove, or patch an object from an image.

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If you like Photoshop and want a free paid trip to Photoshop World plus a CS5.5 suite, check out Adobe’s Next Photoshop Evangelist contest…  All you have to do is create and upload a 1-2 minute video demonstrating your favorite “Hidden Gem” in Photoshop CS5.

What’s a hidden gem? Essentially, it’s just a lesser-known feature or workflow of the product that you find valuable – perhaps using a function or tool in a way that Adobe didn’t imagine… For some great examples, check out this helpful series of Photoshop Hidden Gems that Adobe produced.

Submit your video here »

The top 5 videos will be selected and voted on, with the winner receiving a $4,000-$6,000 prize package including a trip to the PSW Conference either in Washington, D.C. this spring, or in Las Vegas this fall – plus a full copy of CS5.5 Design Standard. The trip includes roundtrip airfare, lodging, event admission, and spending money – plus meeting Adobe’s Photoshop Product Team personally and the opportunity to demonstrate your hidden gem live at the show. Four runners-up will get a free $1,000 copy of Photoshop CS5 Extended.

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There’s an amazing deal out that’s just been expanded for Adobe customers worldwide (in US/Canada, Europe/UK, Australia/NZ, and South Africa) – you can get the full version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 for half off the regular price:  now US$149, £99, €125, or A$124 – plus free shipping:

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Last month Adobe quietly revealed a first look at Photoshop CS6, which was received with hundreds of thousands of views…  And now we have second and third looks, new sneak peeks which focus on performance gains and vector improvements (with dashed and dotted lines).

As images grow larger and larger in resolution and file size, even simple actions such as saving your files can slow down productivity – which has been a point of interest in Photoshop CS5. In this preview, a smooth and oft-requested Background Save capability is introduced allowing you to fully continue working while all file saving takes place in the background, regardless of size or compression.

Large images also slow down functions like Liquify… In the video, a 100MB photograph lags when loading and editing in Photoshop CS5. Now this new Photoshop (CS6 we presume) uses the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to greater effect to bring real-time loading and editing responsiveness. See how much faster and crisper the Liquify filter works, enabling effectively unlimited brush sizes:

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Anybody interested in some free copies of new Adobe Lightroom 4?

We’ve got them. Adobe says the 4th release of this very popular photography solution is due to ship fairly soon – however if you want to try it out and get your feet wet before then, you can just download and run the free LR4 beta version, though this shouldn’t be used for production or permanent work.

In the meantime, did you know that Adobe just extended an unprecedented deal on the current full version – Lightroom 3 – for half off the regular price of US$300, save 50% worldwide? Yes, it’s true, and never been done before – but you can take advantage of that here.  And you’d still be eligible and welcome for the free giveaway of version 4 by entering below.

So, we’ve got two brand new boxed copies of the final official Lightroom 4 product all lined up and would love to give them away to our faithful readers…  It’s easy to sign up.  The contest is open to residents of North America, U.K., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa – and all you need to do for a chance to win is one (or both) of the following:

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Late last week we received these two inquiries via our Contact page:

“Could you please provide a proposed release date for CS6 Design Premium software? I can’t see anywhere on your site where this is mentioned except for the U-turn regarding upgrade policy from earlier versions.”

“I have a budget meeting tomorrow and need to know the approximate release date and projected cost of the CS5 to CS6 Master Collection Suite upgrade.”

So, this is something people really want to know now.  And we have written about it before, giving clues in posts here as far back as March and July of last year…

But it’s clearly time for an update.

Even today, we wish we could give you exact dates and numbers for those questions, but Adobe hasn’t publicly disclosed that information – and likely won’t until CS6 is launched… However, we can make a best estimate of the possible timing for the Creative Suite 6 release window.

On Adobe’s site now there is a document referencing the new CS Release Schedule.  Here are a few of the key elements contained within this Message Summary:

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Content Aware Fill is one of the major features added in Adobe Photoshop CS5, and is said to be one of its greatest new timesavers. CAF allows you to move or delete parts of your image and Photoshop will automatically and intelligently fill in the space left behind. We’ve written about it before with the quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguish­able from magic.” [Arthur C. Clarke]

And in our shop here we save hours every month from using Content Aware Fill as well as other CS5 advancements like Puppet Warp and the improved edge/masking tools.

Yet we still see some people claiming that Content Aware Fill “doesn’t work,” “doesn’t give results like in the demo video,” “doesn’t use the right back­ground,” or is just hype, smoke-and-mirrors, or a “gimmick.”

It’s true that it doesn’t always work and of course has its limitations. You can’t synthesize brand new material or hidden content that doesn’t exist in some related form elsewhere in the image. And often it will require some retouching afterwards to get the final result you want.

But usually it will get you most of the way there very quickly – if you know the most effective ways to use the feature. The best is when it “just works” without doing anything special, and this happens often enough too…

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The long-awaited Adobe Lightroom 4 beta release finally made its appearance last week (free download here), and has some folks pretty excited about the collection of new features. There’s a complete list further below, but some of the biggies include much better video support, soft proofing, integrated maps and photo books, and some amazing improvements to the Develop module.

We’ve got a new video here from the popular Terry White giving a fine walkthrough of what’s new and improved…  Adobe has said they expect the general featureset to remain consistent between the beta and the final release (see when that will be).

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If you’d like to learn how to use Adobe’s Creative Suite tools to easily and portably create websites and apps for tablets, smartphones, and mobile devices there’s a new 2¼-hour course you’ll be interested in…

Guru Paul Trani teaches an extensive free class with 18 video chapters that will take you step-by-step on how to create portable content that will run on both Apple iOS and Google Android devices with a wide variety of screen sizes using a single code base. Basic usage of HTML5 and CSS3 is covered, as well as how to bring in Adobe’s recent additions PhoneGap (for building fast, cross-platform mobile applica­tions) and Typekit (for delivering custom web fonts).

The first half of the video series employs Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 to develop both websites and apps, with steps on how to convert a website into a portable mobile app. The tutorials then move on to using Flash-based tools (with Adobe AIR) to build multi-platform mobile apps. We already know that Flash Professional CS5 can be used to build apps for the iPad and iPhone, but this takes it a step further. The videos guide you all the way through to how to publish your app to your device and to the Android Market (which shows immediately) or to the Apple App Store.

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