Just back from Adobe MAX 2013 and as in previous experiences, it’s always the three most intense days of the year… It’s wall-to-wall with larger-than-life presentations, keynotes with creative luminaries, diverse educational sessions, connecting with other leaders in the Adobe space, hands-on with the latest design tools, meeting the product teams, feeling the energy of the show floor, the buzz over “Sneak Peek” demos of cool new technology, and of course the fantastical MAX Bash party with 5,000 of your closest friends.

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Adobe has made available an excellent resource that’s now updated for CS6 – a free printing handbook in the form of a 149-page downloadable e-book: The Adobe Creative Suite 6 Printing Guide. Earlier editions of this book have been out for previous releases (see the older CS5.x, CS4 and CS3 links below), but now this is fully refreshed and upgraded for the most recent versions of the products.

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Summer is coming and school will be out soon… But if you want to take the break as an oppor­tunity to learn new skills, did you know that Adobe offers free full-year curriculums on print, web, and video design? The three extensive, project-based courses are downloadable to anyone for building career and communica­tion expertise using industry-leading tools, although naturally you can go at your own speed. The programs include presentations, technical guides, project guidelines, reproducible student materials and select media assets, and each project builds on lessons learned previously. Time-saving new features in CS6 are high­lighted within the 2,400+ pages of total content.

Adobe collaborated with a community of educators across the US and UK to develop the appropriate depth and breadth of each project. Additionally, Adobe co-developed the classes with the International Society of Technology Education (ISTE) to create standards-aligned, career-track, course materials that focus on the major fields below. They are recommended for use when preparing for Adobe certification (Adobe Certified Associate, or ACA).

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The Creative Cloud and Creative Suite 6 are the most powerful and versatile toolsets Adobe has ever produced and so we’re seeing a lot of demand for training resources to learn how to best use these products…

In January we posted details on over 30 hours of free video tutorials for CS6, and last month published details on a fantastic new ebook for getting started learning the Adobe Design Suite (194 pages).  But if you’re looking for a nice primer or beginner’s lessons for Adobe Dreamweaver, that’s harder to find.

Fortunately there’s a a new book you can download that will teach you the essentials of Adobe Dreamweaver for free, thanks to the generosity of author Professor Thomas Payne… He writes:

“These tutorials are designed to get you through the basics of making web sites in Dreamweaver with the most flexibility and the least amount of work. Think of them as supplying you with a toolbox full of tools to start making good websites.

They are deceptively packed with informa­tion, and they are designed to also act as reference after you are finished completing them. Web pages across the Internet have a lot of similarities, and the information here is designed to cover many of these similarities.”

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Welcome Spring!  In recent years we’ve given away over $23,000 worth of new Adobe software, so to kick off the new season right we’re going to be giving away two brand new boxes: the Adobe CS6 Design & Web Premium Suite plus Photoshop CS6 – with a collective value of US$2,600 – and it’s open worldwide!

Creative Suite 6, Adobe’s flagship product line, has been doing very well in recent months… Available standalone for instant download or as the centerpiece of the popular Creative Cloud offering, there are many key differences in this release compared to CS5 and earlier, includ­ing hundreds of new features added to all the applications, major performance improvements, user interface enhancements, and much more.

And now we’re thrilled to give away new boxed copies of Adobe’s two best-selling CS6 products to our terrific readers who have helped build our site to what it is today… Just check out our most read posts over the past four years to see what you’ve helped create!

The Design Suite sells for $1,899 / €1,837 / £1,509 and contains over $4,000 in individual tools, including the industry-leading Photoshop Extended, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat X Pro, Flash Pro, among others… (see the complete list of programs it contains)  If you want to try it out first and install it on your computer, that’s easy as the free trial is available for download for both Windows and Mac.  All the tools (and much more) are also available through a free tryout of the Creative Cloud.

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The Creative Cloud and Creative Suite 6 are the most powerful and versatile toolsets Adobe has ever produced and so we’re seeing a lot of demand for training resources to learn how to best use these products…

In January we posted details on over 30 hours of free video tutorials for CS6.  But if you’re just getting started with Adobe’s core design tools, what’s better than a step-by-step book that will teach you the essentials of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign from the ground up?

Fortunately there’s a terrific new book you can download that will teach you all of this for free, courtesy of author Professor Thomas Payne… The way the book does this is by intro­ducing and explaining the tools in a logical way that builds upon what is previously learned. These applica­tions present a vast array of buttons and gadgets that can be overwhelming to the new user. This book makes sense of it all, not showing how everything works, but instead giving a foundation and a path to learn about all those controls and what they can do for you.

The 12 chapters in this book (listed below) look a bit like tutorials. As with tutorials, you work in the programs as you follow along with the reading. Unlike tutorials, the steps here present the informa­tion in a way that is geared to having you actually learn the material, not just a list of steps to get something that looks decent.

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Creative Suite 6 and the Creative Cloud are the most powerful and sophisticated toolsets Adobe has ever released and so there is a lot of demand for training resources to learn how to best use these products…

Last month we posted details on over 30 hours of free video tutorials for CS6.  But printed materials are also nice, to use side-by-side at your own pace. So how about a collection of free e-books to go along with those, which you can instantly download and learn from whenever you want?

There are 10 volumes of 169 chapters in total with over 1,000 pages for most CS6 products. Some tools receive more coverage than others, but the basics are reviewed for all. You can download in the ebooks in PDF format after signing in with your Adobe ID (which is easy to create if you don’t already have one).

If you don’t have the software yet, just download a free working trial for any CS6 product for Windows or Mac (or try the whole Creative Cloud) – then install, run, and start your training…

Here’s how the files break out. Click on the title to download the e-book, or the trial to get the free product tryout. The book file sizes range from 4-10 MB each, so shouldn’t take long to download.  The contents of each volume are listed below the table:

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Spring Photoshop CS6 + Suite Giveaway!]

MAX 2013 – the big annual conference for all-things-Adobe – is coming up in just 3 months in Los Angeles, California… And continuing our long tradition of free Adobe giveaways, we’ve got one free and full conference pass (worth US$1,495) to give away, plus one $400-off ticket discount, both courtesy of our friends at Adobe Systems!

And great news: included together with that first prize pass — and in fact with all MAX 2013 full conference passes — is also an annual Creative Cloud membership for you (containing all fourteen CS6 Master Collection tools plus much more, and valued at $600) – or 12 months added to your account if you’re already a Cloud member… You’ll get immediate access to the latest products and exclusive features, plus an entire library of training videos.  It’s every­thing you need to create anything.

[ Wondering which option is right for you?  See: Compare Adobe CS6 vs. Creative Cloud ]

Adobe MAX 2013 will be chock full of expert keynotes and presentations, technical ses­sions and talks, surprise announcements and sneak peeks, evening events and get-togethers, and possibly some freebies. The show is an amazingly intense experience where they really take care of you from start to finish while you soak up all the growth and learning you can.

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Spring Photoshop CS6 + Suite Giveaway!]

Welcome 2013!  Last year we gave away a lot of software, so to kick off the new year right, we’re going to be giving away brand new boxed copies of Adobe Photoshop CS6, Illustrator CS6, and InDesign CS6 – with a collective value of US$2,000!

Creative Suite 6, Adobe’s flagship product line, has been doing very well in recent months… Available standalone for instant download or direct shipping, or as the core component of their new Creative Cloud offering, there are many important differences in this release compared to Creative Suite 5, including hundreds of new features added to the individual applications, major performance improvements, and much more.

And now we’re thrilled to give away brand new boxed copies of Adobe’s top-of-the-line CS6 products to our terrific readers who have helped build our site to what it is today… Just check out our most popular posts over the past four years to see what you’ve helped create!

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Just out and completely free! Download the new Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Guide and Premiere Elements 11 Guide ebooks, together containing 22 chapters and 185 pages of visual tutorials and feature how-to’s, and both 100% gratis for personal use…

These e-books are great overviews and introductions to the Elements 11 tools, and cover a good deal of helpful material for getting started with the products or picking up more skills and techniques if you’re already familiar. Each volume is a collection of techni­cal lessons for learning how to best use the popular programs.

The downloads are 7.5 MB (PSE) and 5.5 MB (PRE) in size, in PDF format (get the free and better Adobe Reader XI, if you haven’t done so yet). All you need to do to activate the ebook downloads is sign in with your Adobe ID (which is easy to create if you haven’t already got one).

If you don’t yet own Elements 11, just download the fully-working trial from Adobe to run it for free for 30 days. Some of the training in the book will be relevant for older versions of Elements as well, although if you need them we’ve also got older ebooks for Elements 9/10.

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