NEWS FLASH – Adobe has just announced a free public beta release of the eagerly-anticipated Photoshop Lightroom 5, with new tools and advancements to develop, enhance and share your digital photographs… Lightroom 5 provides photographers with an elegant and efficient way to work with their growing digital image collections, bring out the best in their images, and make an impact from raw capture to creative output, all while maintaining the highest possible quality each step of the way.

“The Lightroom team is proud to introduce the fifth major version of the product designed for and by photographers. We’ve been hard at work improving an application that’s intended to be as easy to use as it is powerful. This release builds on the image quality improvements in Lightroom 4 to provide a truly complete workflow and imaging solution. We encour­age you to try the beta release and provide your feedback to the product team.”

Available as a free public download for Windows and Mac, the Lightroom 5 beta is a limited-time preview of new features and capabilities that will be offered in the final release of LR5, expected in mid-2013 and available separately as well as part of the Creative Cloud.

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In continuing to provide the direct download links for such major Adobe products as CS6, Acrobat XI, Elements 11, and Lightroom 4, below you’ll find the DDL for the brand new just-released Adobe Flash Player 11.7 (the final version).  This is important because the free Flash Player is the most widely-used and often-downloaded software in world, and some folks find it easier to access it quickly and directly, without a download manager (e.g., Akamai), or with their own DLM, and without additional products or toolbars included.

Check your current Adobe Flash Player: What version are you running now?

What’s New in Flash Player 11?

Flash Player 11.7 contains dozens of sophisticated new features and enhancements over version 10, here are some of the major ones – for more, and more details, see the Official Release Notes:

• Improved Security through Sandboxing Enhancements
• Concurrency (ActionScript Background Workers)
• Expanded Hardware and Driver Support
• Full screen complete keyboard input
• Low latency audio support (Sound API)
• Protected Mode for Firefox
• Mouse-Lock, 360-Rotation, and Infinite Scrolling
• Added Support for Middle-Click & Right-Click
• Automatic Background Updates (Windows & Mac)
• Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS)
• Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering
• Native 64-bit Support Available
• H.264/AVC Software Encoding for Cameras
• Asynchronous Bitmap Decoding
• TLS Secure Sockets Support
• Cubic Bezier Curves
• Updated iOS native extensions
• Native text input UI for Android

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[UPDATE (May 6th) – Major news out: Adobe Unveils New “CC” Release (CS7)...  Everyone with a free level of membership as described below will receive free trials of these new CC tools.]

So you’ve heard of Adobe’s Creative Cloud offering, maybe wondered what it is, and perhaps have considered subscribing vs. the traditional route of buying a CS6 license…

But did you know that no matter what you do, you can sign up right now for a zero-cost class of membership that never expires and provides free benefits for life?  Anyone can have this in 57 countries worldwide, even if you use the perpetual products instead, or even if you use no other Adobe tools or services at all.

Here is all of what you get completely free, permanently:

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This week the web has been buzzing over a rumor of Adobe offering the eight-year-old Creative Suite 2 software for free download to all, including Photoshop CS2.  “Adobe releases Creative Suite 2 for free,” “Grab Photoshop and CS2 Absolutely Free,” and, “Free! Download Adobe Creative Suite 2, Photoshop CS2, or other Adobe software at no cost,” have read some of the headlines around the blogosphere.

The programs in question are 2005-vintage Adobe and Macromedia tools such as Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, Dreamweaver MX 2004, Flash MX 2004, Acrobat 8.0, Captivate 1.0, and others. The software is pretty dated, originally written for 32-bit Windows 2000/XP and PowerPC Macs – and won’t run optimally or at all on current computer systems, especially [Intel] Macs.  CS2 is “EOL” (end-of-life), no longer officially supported, and not updateable nor upgrade­able. Nevertheless Adobe has put these downloads out there on an open page – full versions in 15 languages with accom­panying universal serial numbers, and seemingly freely available for what it’s worth – but the company says they’re not.  So what’s the story?

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Adobe Acrobat XI (Acrobat 11) is now shipping!  Adobe has really listened to users with this release and incorporated many new features and improvements that will make customers happy.  And continuing in our custom of providing the direct download links for major Adobe software such as CS6, Lightroom 4, and Elements 11, below you’ll find the direct links for the brand new Acrobat XI…

The links given below go to the authentic and secure files residing on Adobe’s servers, are guaranteed genuine, safe, and will not change. They are especially useful when you are unable to download these products via other means – perhaps due to issues with the Adobe Download Assistant or the Akamai Download Manager. Here the access is open and you can just use your browser, or anoth­er download manager (DLM) of your choice.

And there’s big news – after many years and customer requests, Adobe is finally making a free trial of Acrobat Pro available for Mac OS!  For Windows, the Acrobat XI download below is in the form of a single .exe file, and for Mac OS it’s a single .dmg file. There is no actual trial version of Acrobat XI Standard for any platform, but Pro includes all Standard features – so you can try out Pro for free and then decide which version you want at the time of purchase. Languages offered here are Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwe­gian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukranian.

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[UPDATE (February 2013) – Adobe has just released a free software upgrade and everyone can now download Edge Animate 1.5 (still) for free!  They've also now made available for all users a free preview version of Edge Reflow, their new responsive-web design tool.]

Perhaps the biggest news from Adobe’s Create the Web event earlier this week is how much they’re giving away their new mobile-ready web development software… The new Edge Tools & Services collection includes some great products for free download and use, including the final official release of Edge Animate 1.0 – the full and permanent version at no charge (regularly US$499) – for creating interactive and animated web content.

Edge Animate (formerly known as “Adobe Edge” during its long Preview period) is effectively Adobe’s “Flash Pro for the HTML5/CSS3 world” – this new application works similarly to how Flash Professional does for creating rich media – but instead of generating Flash, it outputs standards-based HTML that can be viewed in browsers all across the web, on desktops and laptops as well as mobile devices and tablets.

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Continuing our custom of providing the direct download links for major Adobe products such as Creative Suite 6, Lightroom 4, and Acrobat XI, below you’ll find the direct links from Adobe’s servers for the free trials of the all-new releases of Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11, for both Windows and Mac OS.

These links go to the authentic and secure files residing on Adobe’s servers, are guaranteed genuine, safe, and will not change. They are especially useful when you are unable to download Adobe’s free trials via other means – often due to difficulties with the Akamai Download Manager or Adobe Download Assistant…

With the links provided below, you can use your own browser’s download capability (without DLM), or another download manager of your choice.

For setting up Elements on Windows (both PSE 11 and PRE 11), each program consists of two downloaded files: an .exe and a 7-Zip file (.7z). The .exe file will only work (and install) once the .7z file is fully downloaded and resides in the same location. For the Mac, it’s just a single .dmg file for each program.

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You may have heard of the recent releases of Flash Builder 4.6 (formerly Flex Builder, and part of CS6), plus ColdFusion 10 and ColdFusion Builder 2…

And we’ve written about this particular offer before, but it bears repeating now that we have these major product refreshes for both Flex and ColdFusion.

Adobe will give you full versions of these premium devel­opment tools (US$249 – $1,499 values) absolutely free world­wide if you qualify!  And if you don’t, you might know someone who does and could benefit…

Free copies of Adobe Flash Builder 4.6 Standard are given for non-commercial use to:  (a) students, faculty and staff of eligible educational institutions,  or  (b) software devel­opers who are affected by the current economic conditions and currently unemployed.

The ColdFusion products are also available for free to educational customers, to use for learning purposes only and not for production purposes. Complimentary installation support is available, and if you are a teacher and would like ColdFusion 10 for multiple systems in your lab, you can request up to 30 education serial numbers.

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In surprise news this morning Adobe introduced and announced the immediate availability of Captivate 6, a significant upgrade to its industry-leading eLearning authoring software for rapidly creating a wide range of interactive eLearning and HTML5-based mobile Learning content [see full details].

Below we’ve got the new Adobe Captivate 6 direct download links (Windows and Mac OS) without the Akamai Download Manager, for instant easy access… You’ll also find a wide range of assets that come with Captivate 6 which can be used to create great looking eLearning content. Whether you’re considering buying a full version or upgrading from a prior release, you can always use these trials to install, run, and activate the software on your system.

Here’s some of what’s new in Captivate 6:

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Two weeks after its official introduction, Adobe this morning has released Creative Suite 6, with major upgrades across the line. All CS6 suites and individual products are now shipping and downloadable as trials or for permanent use. The new subscription-rental Creative Cloud offering is also out.

The CS6 configurations are broadly similar to CS5.5, with four product removals and two additions. The product pricing has largely stayed the same, with modest adjustments for some upgrade paths and geographies. The new software is available immedi­ately for Windows and Mac OS via full purchase or discounted upgrade (from as far back as CS3 and CS4, through the end of this year), with delivery via boxed shipment or instant download.

And important news – starting now with this release, all CS6 upgrades can only be purchased direct from Adobe… CS6 upgrades will not be offered from third parties, resellers or retailers.

All of the CS6 free trials are also now available for download. These trials are fully functional for 30 days and work side-by-side with any previous version(s) of the Creative Suite, including CS5 and CS5.5. If you decide not to buy CS6 when the trial period is up, you can just uninstall it and your older tools will continue to run – while all CS6 buyers can easily convert their trial to permanent use without reinstalling the software, even when upgrading. (For more informa­tion, refer to the complete Trial FAQ.)  CS6 will also open all of your CS5 project and data files.

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