It’s been over a month now since Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 completed its beta program and the final version was released, so it’s time to see what most of the reviews are saying out there…

In our earlier article on LR3 tutorials and other resources, we covered what Expert Reviews said: “The new lens correction and noise reduction tools make Lightroom 3 a must-have upgrade from previous versions (just $99 for the upgrade edition), while its powerful management tools remain as good as ever. For many people Lightroom 3 will be the only bit of photo-editing software they need, but even those that have to turn to Photoshop for more-advanced image effects will find Lightroom 3 an invaluable management and pre-processing tool.”

Bright Hub gives the software a perfect 5 out of 5 overall rating and concludes, “It is easy to end this Lightroom 3 review with full marks for Adobe. This product stands head and shoulders above the competition in an increasingly crowded sector. It is a great choice for professionals and advanced amateurs who are looking to for the best way to improve their digital workflow, and it has an appropriate learning curve for those who are new to this series of editors. In short, it may be all you ever need.”

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With our post last week for five hours of free tutorials for Elements 7 and 8, it begged the question – when will Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9 be available?

Adobe historically ships a new version of Elements every year, in the fall – but when exactly? Let’s do some digging and find the release schedules for recent versions:

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“Time is money.” Or maybe it’s, “money is time,” can never remember which… Regardless, something that saves you time is saving you money. And if a product saves you enough time to more than pay for itself, it could be called a smart purchase.

With that in mind, there are three new performance studies out for Adobe CS5 products from the independent technology research firm, Pfeiffer Consulting. The time savings are impressive – on average, CS5 is two to three times faster than CS4 for 21 features and 130 performance benchmarks tested in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and Premiere Pro.

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Adobe Captivate 5 has just been released and it’s already been called a “must-have update” by Learning Solutions Magazine… Captivate is Adobe’s industry-leading rapid authoring tool for eLearning solutions, used to create software demonstrations, interactive simulations, branch­ing scenarios, self-running presentations, and randomized quizzes without programming. Perhaps the most notable change with Captivate 5 is Adobe broke from the code history of previous versions to add Mac OS support and in so doing, took the opportunity to completely rearchitect the application from the ground-up – and it clearly shows.

Overall, the performance, interface, and usability improvements from the rewrite make this much more than a simple upgrade, it’s more like a brand new product. The new user interface is similar to the Creative Suite 5 interfaces, and is well-integrated with other recent Adobe tools. And because the product now runs (and works the same) on a Mac – plus uses the same files – you can now create software simulations of Mac applications. You can instantly download a free trial for either platform, although first double-check the minimum system requirements.

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If you haven’t upgraded to Creative Suite 5, you’re missing out on new ways to reach customers, differentiate your brand, and save your company time and money in the process. Here are five good reasons to upgrade to CS5:

Productivity

CS5 brings quantifiable efficiency to users (see just-released benchmarks) through its optimi­zation for the latest hardware and operating systems and its focus on reducing common prod­uction tasks from days to hours and from hours to a few mouse clicks. For example, CS5 users can work up to 10X faster with large Photoshop images, get jaw-dropping video-editing speed, and perform numerous work­flow-specific production tasks in a fraction of the time.

Differentiation

CS5 introduces rich new creativity features for print, web, interactive, mobile, and video professionals to produce compelling content and stories that make brands stand out in a crowded marketplace. For example, companies can incorporate cutting-edge 3D objects and motion graphics into their creative thanks to new Repoussé technology in Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended.

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Happy second birthday Acrobat 9!

Yes, it’s true – two years ago today Adobe officially released Acrobat 9:

Adobe Acrobat 9 Software Now Available

New Version Receives Accolades for PDF Portfolios, Real-time Capabilities and Support for Adobe Flash Technology

SAN JOSE, Calif. — June 25, 2008 — Adobe Systems today announced the immediate availability of Adobe® Acrobat® 9 software, a significant upgrade that transforms the process of creating and sharing electronic documents… [continues]

So considering Adobe usually runs on two-year product release schedules, give or take, what does this imply for when Acrobat 10 will be coming out?

In early May, we reported here that “Acrobat 10 is going to launch in the second half of this year” – but now we have more precise information…

On Tuesday, Adobe’s top dog gave a presentation and Q&A to financial analysts in which he talked about CS5, Acrobat, and business in general. He said some great things, and here are the highlights for when Acrobat 10 will be available and its new features:
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One of the most common upgrade questions we see out there is asking what’s new, what’s different, what’s better, what’s changed between Adobe CS5 and CS4? Or more fundamen­tally, what are the key new features in CS5, versus CS4, or even CS3?

Creative Suite 5 contains hundreds of new or enhanced features and func­tions across the 15 point products that comprise it. So the easiest way to look at it is by major product… For example, Photoshop CS5 Extended con­tains 18 new features that CS4 didn’t have, plus a further 14 more that have been enhanced. The numbers are similar for other products and even greater over CS3 of course – although generally speaking CS5 has significantly more improvements and innovation compared to CS4 than CS4 had over CS3.

CS4 was certainly a capable release (we used it here every day), but some folks have com­mented that CS5 is really the release they wanted when CS4 came out and that CS5 is a game-changer over both previous versions… On that account, we haven’t seen a bad review of CS5 yet.

So for the breakout by individual product, here are the CS5 vs. CS4 vs. CS3 comparisons:

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Yes – Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 is just out and now shipping! Pretty much on the time­frame we forecast, you can download a free trial today… And the new product will work side-by-side with any previous releases of Lightroom you own. If you have an earlier version installed, Lightroom 3 will ask if you’d like to upgrade your catalog and move everything over.

The price remains US$299 for the full version, and $99 to upgrade from either LR1 or LR2. Students and teachers can grab the full education version for just $89, or 70% off. Languages available today include English, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese.

Moments ago Adobe also refreshed their longstanding special offer where you can get 30% off Lightroom when you purchase it together with Photoshop – only now the versions are Lightroom 3 with Photoshop CS5 (or any suite containing Photoshop CS5). No coupon or promo code is required for the discount.

Lightroom 3 will run well on 32-bit or 64-bit systems, and is designed for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, or Mac OS (see full system requirements). It’s sold as multiplatform software, meaning it can be installed on either Mac OS X or Windows and will deliver the same features and functions on both. And similar to CS5, you may be able to install Lightroom on up to two computers, subject to the terms of the software license agreement.

What’s new in Lightroom 3?

With the benefit of nearly two years of product development since the previous version, plus two full beta periods under its belt, this third-generation digital darkroom is looking like a very smooth and polished final release.

Learn more, download the new LR3 datasheet, or watch Terry White’s new video, My Top Five Favorite Lightroom 3 Features. If you need the direct download links for Lightroom 3 to access the software without the Akamai Download Manager, we have posted them here.

We think the final release of Lightroom 3 could be coming soon, from reading all the signs… These two new videos from Terry White and Adobe TV build the momentum and anticipation:

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Since we started offering the direct download links for all CS5 product trials last week, there have been some inquiries on Acrobat’s absence from Adobe’s suite downloads, and it also seems to be a common question out there on the Net…

Acrobat 9.3 Pro is the version that is officially part of Creative Suite 5, but it is not included in the trial versions of any of Adobe’s CS5 suites… So if you would like it, Acrobat Pro must be down­loaded separately (in English, French, German, or Japanese), with its own 30-day trial period – although note that Adobe offers an Acrobat 9 trial for Windows only.

If you decide to convert your trial and purchase any CS5 suite edition on either Windows or Mac (except for Production Premium), you will receive a full working copy of Acrobat 9 Pro. Please note – very important - you need (and should make sure to receive) a separate serial number from Adobe for Acrobat 9 Pro – the main CS5 key you get for the rest of the suite will not work for Acrobat.

So, why did Adobe separate Acrobat 9 from the rest of the CS5 suite, for trials and activation? We suspect it’s because Acrobat 9 will be celebrating its second birthday soon and the release of Acrobat 10 is due out later this year – and so by creating separate packages and license keys, it will make it much easier to swap the new version of Acrobat into Creative Suite 5 when it arrives…

At that point we’ll probably see a point release of CS5 that includes the new Acrobat 10, say for example Creative Suite 5.3 (similarly to how CS3 became CS3.3 when Acrobat 9 was announced and incorporated in June 2008) – and current CS5 users will easily be able to upgrade if desired.