Complete Online Manuals and Help Doc for All Adobe Products

Even years after it went up, a lot of people still don’t know about it.

We’re talking about the free online documentation for all Adobe software – a set of manuals that can answer quite a few user questions, and be a great resource if you don’t own a product yet but want to find out more about it.

It exists in searchable and discussable form for all major Adobe applications, including the Creative Suite, Lightroom, Acrobat, Photoshop Elements, etc. – for all recent releases on both Windows and Mac OS.

For example, at least once a week we receive a question on how to save back to earlier versions from InDesign CS5.5… Fortunately, this is answered in the “Saving Documents” section in InDesign’s online manual.

Each reference is downloadable as a complete e-book if you so desire (more about this below)… the substantial “Using Adobe Photoshop CS5” guide is nearly 600 pages alone!

Also helpful is the ability to post comments and questions & answers on the individual documentation pages, in case something’s not entirely clear.

Here are the direct links to the references:

• Creative Suite – CS5.5, CS5, CS4, and CS3, including:
  • Photoshop and Photoshop Extended
  • Dreamweaver
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • InCopy
  • Flash Professional
  • Flash Catalyst
  • Flash Builder
  • Premiere Pro
  • After Effects
  • Adobe Encore
  • OnLocation
  • Fireworks
  • Contribute
  • Soundbooth
  • Audition
  • Adobe Bridge
  • Camera Raw
  • Media Encoder
  • CS Live
• Acrobat X (10), 9, 8:
  • Standard
  • Professional
  • Extended
• Photoshop Elements 9, 8, 7
• Premiere Elements 9, 8, 7
• Photoshop Lightroom 3 and 2
• Captivate 5.5, 5, 4, and 3
• ColdFusion 9 and Builder 2
• Adobe Connect 8
• LiveCycle ES2 and ES2.5
• All other products

Books and manuals no longer come in the box – it’s all live and living online, updated regularly by the Adobe documentation team… There is installed help that comes with the products which can be accessed when not connected to the Internet, but it consists of only about 70% of the content available on the web and is not updated.

Important! If you’re going to be offline for a while or just prefer to read it all in an ebook format, there are complete PDF versions available for download for each application (look for “View Help PDF” in the upper right corner) – just grab that and poof, you have a full up-to-date manual in the form of an electronic book, for free (and great for tablet viewing like on the iPad, where it can be opened and stored in iBooks).

And if for some reason you don’t find your answer there, it’s an easy jump over to Adobe’s User-to-User Forums or Customer Support via the Community Help facility.

Extra! Download Free eBooks for Creative Suite 5 and Elements 9

As a special bonus to our visitors, we are offering free downloads of three new visual learning guides, three separate e-books in PDF format that we’re making available at no cost to you:

• Download the Free Learning Creative Suite 5 eBook – 172 Pages
• Download the Free Guide to Photoshop Elements 9 eBook – 95 Pages
• Download the Free Guide to Premiere Elements 9 eBook – 78 Pages