Adobe Lightroom 3.2 and Adobe Camera Raw 6.2 are now available as final releases, and are free for all current Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 owners… These updates include bug fixes, performance and stability improvements, new camera and lens profile support, and new features for Lightroom:

 » Download the Final Adobe Lightroom 3.2 for Mac (a free update to Lightroom 3.0)
 » Download the Final Adobe Lightroom 3.2 for Windows

 » Download the Final Adobe Camera Raw 6.2 for Mac (a free update to Photoshop CS5)
 » Download the Final Adobe Camera Raw 6.2 for Windows

While it may seem Adobe skipped a version with no Lightroom 3.1, this was done just to align the point release number with Camera Raw (ACR 6.2), which shares the camera-related features. Since the initial “Release Candidate” for LR 3.2 was posted earlier this month, Adobe has fixed more bugs (including an issue with the new Facebook-publish feature), supported more cameras, plus added direct publishing to SmugMug.

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Two months ago we studied the likely release dates for Adobe Acrobat 10 and concluded, “it looks like Acrobat 10 (or Acrobat X) will be shipping sometime between mid-October and late-November this year.”

At a financial conference presentation last week, Adobe’s Chief Financial Officer Mark Garrett was quoted as saying, “Acrobat 10 ships later this year, the next cycle in the Acrobat product family – which will continue to drive Acrobat growth and penetration going forward.”

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[UPDATE (August 31st) – The final release of Lightroom 3.2 is now out, a free update for all Lightroom 3 owners, and free 30-day trial for everyone else. For now, the initial Lightroom 3.2 'Release Candidate' described below also remains available for free use for all, if desired.]

Adobe has just made available for free download its Release Candidate for the first update to Lightroom 3, which will be called Lightroom 3.2… This new release has dozens of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one new feature – and thus far looks like a winner and a welcomed update by the Lightroom community. But you don’t even need to own any version of Lightroom to get or use it.

The download is in the form of a ZIP file for both Windows and Mac and is not just an update nor a trial – but a full version that will work until it expires for all users. These Release Candidates are more like betas in that Adobe is looking to see how a poten­tial new version performs in the field (and welcomes your input, feedback, and bug reports on it) – but Lightroom 3.2 shouldn’t be confused with Lightroom 3 beta 2 (which was the last available beta version of Lightroom 3.0 before its final release). And although Release Candidates are fully-working free versions that don’t require serial numbers, typically they have an expiration date to stop functioning within two calendar months of issue – meaning Lightroom 3.2 RC will probably expire by October 31, 2010.

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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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