New limited-time offer – discount pricing on award-winning Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 8 software… Make summer photos look extraordinary! Adobe’s Elements 8 products make it easy to edit, enhance and share photos and video clips. Create amazing images and incredible movies, and use them together in cinematic slide shows and more.

The deal is available in many countries and varies a little depending on location. In North America, it’s save $50 on Photoshop and Premiere Elements together, or $30 on either product alone. In Europe and the U.K., it’s save 30% on the full bundle, or 15% on the single products or upgrades. No coupon or voucher code is needed to take advantage of this promotion, just click through.

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The Adobe Student and Teacher Editions look like a great deal. They offer big discounts, as much as 80% off normal prices. They’re available for most of Adobe’s product line, including Creative Suite 5, Lightroom 3, Acrobat 9, and Elements 8. They can be purchased by anyone who qualifies – primary and secondary school students, college or university students, faculty, teachers, and administrators. Even part-time students or teachers can be eligible, and there is no age limitation. They’re available pretty much worldwide in many languages on both Windows and Mac, and you don’t need any kind of coupon or promotion code to get the deep discounts.

So what’s the catch? Is the Academic software different or limited somehow? Is there any sort of time restriction, time limit, or time out – do Adobe Student Editions expire? Or are they unusable for commercial purposes?

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“Adobe MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to learn from the experts and connect with thousands of the most influential designers, developers, and decision-makers in our industry.”

If you’d like to go to Adobe MAX this year in L.A. (October 23–27) and save $400 in the process, just purchase (full or upgrade) any one of the products listed below from the Adobe online store and you’ll receive a special promo code that will discount your regular full confer­ence pass price by US$400…

But since the upgrade price for many of these products is less than $400, basically you’re getting the software for more than free!

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Adobe recognizes that many people use both Lightroom and Photoshop, and so is offering a special deal whereby you can save 30% off Lightroom 3 if you purchase it together with Photoshop CS5 in any form. This means if you buy Photoshop CS5, Photoshop CS5 Extended, or any CS5 suite edition (which all contain Photoshop), you’ll get 30% off Lightroom when you buy them at the same time.

And it works for either buying the full version or upgrading from an older version, for either product… So if you are upgrading Photoshop, but buying Lightroom for the first time, you’ll get 30% off the price of the full version of Lightroom (e.g., off of $299/€249/£198). No promotion code is required to activate the discount, and it is valid worldwide for all Adobe Commercial store customers (Education and Volume purchases are not eligible).

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We have a new voucher to save $10/€10/£10 on Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro Extended (full or upgrades) with coupon code: prodesigntools. Just enter this promotion code after adding the product to your shopping cart at the Adobe Store for the discount to activate.

This special offer is available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia/NZ, and throughout Western Europe – save $10 in the US and Canada; save €10 in France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Finland; save £10 in the UK; save A$10 in Australia; save CHF 10 in Switzerland; save DKK 100 in Denmark; save NOK 100 in Norway; and save SEK 100 in Sweden.

This promo code is valid until July 21, 2010, in Adobe Commercial stores only (not Education or Volume).

Since we started offering all the direct download links for CS5 and for CS4 two weeks ago, the figures show that overwhelmingly the most popular selection down­loaded by a 7-to-1 margin is, surprisingly, the duo of After Effects CS4 and Premiere Pro CS4. At first that might seem odd – so why is it? It must be owing to the new 64-bit-only require­ment for those two products (and only those two products) in Creative Suite 5… Adobe explains the reason for this is because devel­oping in native 64-bit gives the best optimized perfor­mance benefits with the demanding technical require­ments of working with high definition video.

Note this is more of a Windows factor and does not affect the majority of Mac systems using Intel proces­sors… But without a 32-bit Windows version of After Effects CS5 or Premiere Pro CS5, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising the CS4 releases are still in demand. After all, statistics show that 58% of the broad Internet commu­nity is still running Windows XP, which isn’t supported for those CS5 apps.

The question then becomes, what to do about it? If you’re still on 32-bit or XP, but need one of these products after the free trial has run out, would your best choice be to buy the previous generation version of CS4? Doubtless your next computer will be 64-bit – so wouldn’t it be better to invest and get both – CS4 (for current use) and CS5 (for future growth) – two for the price of one? Especially since these two new releases have been getting stellar reviews…

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[UPDATE (May 9th) – When will Lightroom 3 be released? Get the free Lightroom 3 beta.]

Adobe is launching a new “Deal of the Day” program and the inaugural deal is a healthy $100 (or 33%) off of Lightroom 2.7… Version 2.7 was released on April 21st.

The $100 instant discount is valid for full versions of Lightroom (not upgrades, which cost $99), and you must use coupon code lightroom100 to activate the savings. The offer is available only on purchases made directly from Adobe by customers in North America, and ends on Friday, May 7, 2010, at 11:59pm PDT – so if you’ve been thinking about making the jump to the well-liked Lightroom, this is a pretty good entry!

If you prefer to try before you buy, you can immediately download the fully-functional free trial, and then just convert it before midnight with the promo code.

In other news, today Creative Suite 5 is available and begins shipping in French and German / CS5 Français Maintenant Disponible / Deutsch Jetzt Verfügbar.

Photoshop and Premiere Elements 8 are the top consumer photo- and video-editing products on the planet*, and this is one of the best deals we’ve ever seen on the bundle package, which has received great reviews. You get $50 off for the pair, with a combination of instant savings ($20) plus mail-in rebate ($30) – yielding a one-third price cut and a net cost of just $99.99, plus you can download them instantly.

If you want Photoshop Elements by itself, the total savings is $30 instead. The offers are valid until May 10, 2010 for purchases made through the Adobe Store, and the only bad news is these discounts are available in U.S. and Canada only.

See our earlier quick take on Elements 8. Or if you like you can try them out for free first.

(* Source: The NPD Group/Retail Tracking Service based on units sold, 2002 to 2010.)

This seems to be the question of the week. Adobe’s policy for major product releases has been that you may qualify for a free upgrade if you buy the old version after the new version has been announced, but before it ships… The advantages are threefold: (1) you get software available for immediate download, (2) you get a more mature release if you prefer and can move up later at your leisure, and (3) you win a lower upgrade cost (e.g., from CS, CS2, CS3), because you’re buying fewer steps to go up (to CS4 rather than to CS5).

The question now is, does this apply now for CS5? Creative Suite 5 was officially announced on Monday, April 12, and CS5 is now in preorder. However, you can still buy and download CS4 on Adobe’s site. So, we are in that relevant eligibility period right now… But will it work – could you get the best of both worlds and buy or upgrade to CS4 now, and then later get a free upgrade to CS5 when you—and it—are ready?

Well the official page on the matter at Adobe is called the “post-announce upgrade policy” (for retail and educational versions) – and it has not changed since CS5 was launched. If there were any change in policy, it would already be reflected there. So Adobe’s historic policy remains in effect. Arguably this free policy and its name could be a bit clearer, but it is what it is – and probably Adobe doesn’t want to broadcast it too much.

Supporting the case is anecdotal evidence. Folks who have recently contacted Adobe have reported, “Adobe Sales con­firmed free upgrade when CS5 ships” (also here) and “you can install and run CS4 and CS5 on the same computer.”

However, the free upgrade is not automatic. It does depend on the software version and time of purchase. For example, your upgrade must be for the same platform, language, and edition as your previous version. So the short answer is that it may be possible – but you might wish to check with Adobe Customer Service (email, chat, or phone) in your particular case to verify that you qualify and request the materials to file an upgrade request, as the offer is only avail­able through Adobe directly.

In any event, rumor has it that CS5 could be shipping on April 30th and delivered by May 7th – so if you’re thinking about doing it then that could be the remaining window!

Adobe has a new voucher code: Use adobe10 to save 10% on all products in the Commercial Store in Europe, from now until March 17th 10th… (Update – Adobe has just notified us this offer was so overly successful that they had to expire it early – our apologies!) The code should be entered at time of checkout to receive the discount in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and elsewhere in the EU.

Another new offer, valid worldwide, is save $20 (£13/€17) instantly when you purchase Photoshop Elements with Acrobat. This discount is in addition to the existing $20 Mail-in Rebate for Photoshop Elements products. See our quick take on Elements 8 here.

Lastly, Adobe has extended the deal for purchasing multiple copies of Adobe Acrobat – buy four, get one free – until April 23, 2010. So that translates into savings of up to US$449 when you sign up for the easy new online Volume Licensing Program with Adobe Acrobat software. Note that Adobe has just rechristened their volume licensing store to be called the Adobe Business Store, and this offer also works in both North America and Europe.