» 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.

Now, Lightroom 3.2 has new or improved RAW support for 16 additional cameras, including the Canon EOS 60D, Sony SLT-A33, and Fuji FinePix HS10. A total of 126 new lens profiles were also added (see the full list of all Lightroom-supported cameras), and 76 bugs fixed.

The result is a very solid-looking final release and a recommended update to Lightroom 3 that is available for immediate download. If you don’t already own Lightroom 3, Adobe’s free trial download has also now been updated to version 3.2.

Lightroom 3.2 is available in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (Traditional and Simplified).

Installation Notes

For computers with previous versions of Lightroom currently installed:
1. Download the Lightroom 3.2 update.
2. Open the folder, double-click the updater file, and follow the onscreen instructions.

For computers without a previous version of Lightroom installed, there is no need to install any previous versions of Lightroom before installing Lightroom 3.2.
1. Download the Lightroom 3.2 update.
2. Open the folder, double-click the updater file, and follow the onscreen instructions.

Note: Lightroom 3.2 will automatically remove the previous Lightroom 3 executable and replace the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom folder with the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.2 folder.

64-bit Installation

The Lightroom installer contains both a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the application. By default, the 64-bit version will be installed only on Windows Vista and Windows 7 64-bit operating systems. All other operating systems will install the 32-bit version by default.

Note that Camera Raw 6 is not compatible with Photoshop CS4 or earlier. The last release of Camera Raw for Photoshop CS4 was ACR 5.7 on 4/20/2010.

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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.”

Adobe’s fiscal year ends in late November 2010, so this lends credence that the release is on track for availability within our estimated timeframe.

But if you can’t wait until release day to see (and try) a copy, register your interest in the forthcoming Acrobat 10 public pre-release program. There are no guarantees on being accepted when it opens, but it’s free and easy to sign up so it’s worth a try. The application is open for Acrobat, Adobe Reader, or both. Adobe’s goal with the program is to receive feedback on new features and learn about possible bugs to help produce a release that’s better for everyone.

Acrobat Webinar Series

In the meantime, there’s still plenty to learn about Adobe Acrobat 9 – here’s a list of 11 free presentations to help get more out of what you’re using today… These were recorded earlier and are now available on-demand:

• 30 Super Tips and Tricks for using Adobe Acrobat 9
• Adobe Acrobat 9: Security
• Adobe Acrobat 9: Portfolios
• Adobe Acrobat 9: Optimize Your PDF Workflow
• Adobe Acrobat 9: An Essential Complement to MS Office
• Acrobat 9 Creating and Distributing Forms
• Acrobat 9 for Design Professionals: Authoring Interactive PDFs
• Administration and Productivity with Acrobat 9 Pro
• Why Upgrade to Acrobat 9?
• Top New Features of Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro
• The Basics of Adobe Acrobat 9

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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.

So what happened to Adobe Lightroom 3.1? There actually wasn’t one – they are calling this first update “3.2″ to align the point release numbers with Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which has a new Release Candidate of its own – Camera Raw 6.2. The Camera Raw plug-in is not required to run Lightroom — it goes with Photoshop instead — but Adobe adds new camera and lens profile support to both programs at the same time. So the release number syncing is to avoid confusion on which version corresponds with which.

With Lightroom 3.2 RC, we have an impressive list of 68 bugs fixed plus support for 12 new cameras and 57 new lens profiles added or improved. Performance is also generally reported to be significantly boosted all around. And lastly there is the addition of direct publish func­tionality from Lightroom to Facebook.

The new cameras supported are: the Casio EXILIM EX-FH100; Leica S2; Panasonic DMC-FZ100, DMC-LX5, DMC-FZ40/FZ45; Pentax 645D; Samsung NX10, TL500 (EX1); Sony A290, A390; and Sony Alpha NEX-3, NEX-5.

So, should you update? Adobe says, “The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automat­ically to all of our customers.” If you’ve had any issues or reservations with the initial release of Lightroom 3.0, or have been waiting for the first “bug-fix release” before buying, we recom­mend giving this a free and easy try. You don’t need to log in or provide any information – you can immediately download and use it free for a couple months.

Installation is straightforward, with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions included:

Working with Lightroom 3.2

• Mac: The Mac Lightroom 3.2 release candidate can be installed alongside Lightroom 3.0.
• Windows: By default, the Lightroom 3.2 release candidate will remove or over­write your existing Lightroom 3.0 installation. If you wish to return to Lightroom 3.0 after installing Lightroom 3.2, simply reinstall Lightroom 3.0 from your original download after uninstalling Lightroom 3.2 using the Windows add/remove program utility.

Both versions of the application share the same catalog format allowing your catalogs to be opened by either version without complications.

And when the final version of Lightroom 3.2 is eventually released, it will be a free update for all current Lightroom 3 owners and at that time you can just install that version over this 3.2 Release Candidate and continue on with your work.

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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:

Funny things happened in 2008 with the launch of CS4 happening around the same time (September 23) – but if you exclude that occasion then the trend is definitely for the Elements release date happening in late September, just after back-to-school. Also, Adobe has shipped both Mac and Windows versions for six out of the eight Photoshop Elements releases, and lately Adobe has demonstrated increasing Mac support in other products, so we believe we’ll see both platforms supported again for Photoshop Elements 9.0.

So put it all together and we forecast that Photoshop and Premiere Elements 9 will ship on or about September 22, 2010, with PSE9 available on both Windows and Mac OS.

One question remains: what is likely to be in the new products? The current Elements 8 was largely inherited from CS4, so with CS5 out now we should see some nice innovations. Some have wondered if we might be so lucky to see “wow” additions like Content-Aware Fill or Puppet Warp coming in Photoshop Elements 9 – but our sense is these new features are a bit too fresh and flagship to move down to Elements at this time, and Adobe will likely keep them as “must-have” functions in Photoshop CS5 at least until CS6 and Photoshop Elements 10, which could arrive together in the fall of 2011.

To see the feature addition history for the last three releases of Elements, you can compare the different versions of: Photoshop Elements for Windows, Photoshop Elements for Mac, or Premiere Elements. What would you like to see in PSE 9 and PRE 9?

We’re giving away free copies of Photoshop Elements 9 – win yours! Or check our track record for forecasting other major Adobe product releases like CS5, Lightroom 3, and Acrobat 10.

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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.

The full reports with results:

1. Adobe Creative Suite 5: How Key Design Applications Increase Your Productivity
2. Adobe Photoshop CS5: 64-bit Performance and Efficiency Measures
3. Adobe CS5 Production Premium: New Efficiencies for Today’s Production Realities

Here are some of the major findings:

• The productivity of Photoshop CS5 with benchmarked operations such as Content-Aware Fill is significantly boosted over techniques available in previous releases, almost five times faster. Some other features like straightening images are nearly 4x as fast.
• InDesign CS5 offers a new Selection tool that makes object modification significantly faster than with previous releases. Working with multi-column text or multiple page sizes is much easier and faster than in the past. Grid-enabled tools speed the creation of multi-element designs.
• Productivity features introduced with Illustrator CS5 include variable-width strokes, enhanced arrow-creation options, faster ways of joining paths, among others, which provide significant measurable productivity gains.
• Cross-platform native 64-bit support of several key CS5 applications allows multiple pro­grams running in parallel to share available memory in a highly efficient way, and provides creative professionals with new ways of harnessing the power of modern computing hardware and system software.
• Photoshop CS5 running in a 64-bit environment was up to 15 times faster compared with CS4 running on a 32-bit system in some of the benchmarks for this project.
• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 introduces the Mercury Playback Engine, a set of technologies that can significantly increase productivity in high-definition production workflows.
• Processing of H.264 video from popular DSLR cameras was over five times faster with Premiere Pro CS5 than with CS4.
• 64-bit support allows After Effects CS5 to work with extended memory configurations, and significantly increases the number of frames of a composition (by up to 20x) that can be previewed from memory.
• After Effect’s new Roto Brush automates and redefines a particularly time-consuming task of the modern post-production workflow – clocking up to 11 times faster than traditional rotoscoping techniques, while producing a cleaner result.
• The hardware acceleration, parallel processing and other performance improvements introduced in Adobe CS5 Production Premium provide a very significant and in some cases spectacular increase in performance and efficiency.

Premiere Pro CS5 and After Effects CS5 are 64-bit only applications. Photoshop CS5 comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. If you need 32-bit versions of Adobe After Effects or Premiere Pro, see this page.

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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.

Reach

CS5 helps you capitalize on the pervasiveness of the Flash platform and the latest digital publishing trends to better reach, retain, and deliver value to customers wherever they are. For example, CS5 enables you to prepare content for the latest mobile devices such as the Apple iPad, Google Android, RIM Blackberry, Amazon Kindle, Sony eBook Reader, and Barnes & Noble nook.

Optimization

CS5 introduces integration with Omniture web analytics for closely tracking ROI and fine-tun­ing the spend in an enterprise digital strategy. Current Omniture customer can adopt CS5 to streamline and control costs in A/B testing and allow designers and developers to instrument Flash content directly within their creative workflows without manual tagging. And long-term CS users can add Omniture analytics to an effective digital strategy (requires separate investment in Omniture tools as well as in CS5).

Innovative Industry Leadership

Only Adobe CS5 offers comprehensive, industry-leading tools for print, web, interactive, mo­bile, video, and application development – all of the touchpoints in an effective digital strategy. The tight integration among these tools enables teams to share assets and collaborate more effectively across disciplines. Adobe CS5 continues Adobe’s long history of innovative solutions that address pressing business needs.

For over a dozen more reasons to upgrade, see this page.

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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:

Shantanu Narayen – President and CEO, Adobe Systems:

In our Acrobat business, the strength we experienced in the fourth and first quarters continued through the second quarter. Enterprise licensing was particularly strong, demonstrating the Acrobat and PDF value proposition continues to resonate with large customers. We are on track to deliver a new version of Acrobat late in our fourth quarter that will focus on enabling knowledge workers and enterprises to collaborate across critical document workflows. [Ed. note – Adobe's fiscal fourth quarter ends in late November 2010.]

Michael Olson – Piper Jaffray:

Just one quick question, with Acrobat 10 coming in Q4, people may wonder what kind of additions can you make to a product like Acrobat – and I realize you may not want to give away specific new features, but can you just talk about in general what kind of things you can do with products like Acrobat to improve the new version?

Shantanu Narayen:

Mike, what we are seeing is a lot of Acrobat usage right now within enterprises to do what we call critical document workflows. The integration of Acrobat and acrobat.com is ripe area of innovation and opportunity for us to continue to deliver value to custom­ers. Delivery of PDF files across mobile devices is becoming an increasing use case for us. So, multiple innovations are on the drawing board and we are excited about the new version that as we said will come out later this year.

So there you have it – from what the CEO says, it looks like Acrobat 10 (or Acrobat X) will be shipping sometime between mid-October to late-November this year. If you’d like to give feed­back for what you’d like to see in the new version, please feel free to share your thoughts at the Acrobat Feature Request forum. Or, you can enter a comment below…

In the meantime, join the free online Acrobat Webinar Series where Adobe experts share tips, tricks, and insights into Acrobat, plus answer questions – the most recent session is this afternoon at 1pm Eastern time, and available on-demand thereafter.

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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 3.2 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.

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With the official release of Lightroom 3.0 looking to be just around the corner here!, it’s time to launch our June contest… This month we’re giving away 3 free upgrades to Lightroom 3, and all you have to do for a shot to win is enter your email address in the “Adobe Special Offers” box in the sidebar to the right for our free occasional e-newsletter. That’s it.

It’s open worldwide with one subscription per person and submissions end at 11:59pm EDT on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010. Then on July 1st we’ll choose three new subscribers at random, and if you’re one of them we’ll ship you a shiny new shrinkwrapped upgrade to Lightroom 3 for free! (Or if you’ve already purchased your upgrade by that time, just send us the bill and we’ll reimburse 100% of your cost via PayPal.) We’ll contact you via email just to get your address for shipping, and then follow up back here announcing your first name and hometown. It’s that simple, no kidding!

If you like, you can find out more about our newsletter – it typically covers select Adobe-related news plus the latest specials and promo codes. And of course you can easily unsubscribe from the bottom of any issue. Natu­rally we’ll never spam you or share your email address with anyone else, ever. So enter your email today and spread the word – someone has to win and there’s nothing to lose…

See Terry White’s new video, My Top 5 Favorite Lightroom 3 Features.

Speaking of giveaways, we’re also pleased to announce the winners of our Best CS5 Books Free Contest last month… Thank you all for the wonderful entries – there were so many good ones that it was very difficult to choose and we wish everyone could have a free book! The new CS5 Classroom book series just came out and the ten commenters who will be receiving them are:

1. Jonathan from Springdale, AR, chose CS5 Design Premium Classroom in a Book
2. Kenneth from Albany, NY, chose Photoshop CS5 Classroom in a Book
3. Heidi from Petaluma, CA, chose Photoshop too
4. Steven from Conway, AR, chose Photoshop also
5. Jami from Sheridan, IL, chose Photoshop as well
6. Jason from Cambridge, MA, chose InDesign CS5 Classroom in a Book
7. Thomas from London, England, chose Dreamweaver CS5 Classroom in a Book
8. Andrew from Lansing, MI, chose Illustrator CS5 Classroom in a Book
9. Jon from Vancouver, Canada, chose Flash Catalyst CS5 Classroom in a Book
10. Druyan from Santa Barbara, CA, chose Premiere Pro CS5 Classroom in a Book

Thank you again for participating and good luck this month!

[UPDATE (July 14th) – Congratulations to our three winners of a free upgrade to Lightroom 3: Warren from Coquitlam, BC; Chester from Chester, SC (really); and Becca from Pittsburgh, PA — and thanks to all who entered.]

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With May wrapping up it’s time to take another look at a question we first wrote about two months ago, “when is Lightroom 3 coming out?” Back then we concluded, “with luck we expect to see general availability of Adobe Lightroom 3.0 in June, 2010.” Since then, the evidence has grown that we could see the final LR3 quite soon, perhaps only a matter of weeks…

First, the current Lightroom 3 beta ver­sion will expire at the end of June, and remains free to download and use until then. But come June 30th this beta will stop working, and it seems unlikely that Adobe would ask its hungry Lightroom userbase to hold on for a third beta or a further extension before our beta work­flows are switched to the final release – even moreso considering it’s been nearly two years since Lightroom 2 first came out.

Second, this week there’s been a big publicity push surrounding the launch of Scott Kelby’s new Lightroom 3 book, which is now on preorder… The consensus around the web is this means the final product must be getting close.

Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, is the upcoming expiration date of a longstanding Adobe special offer whereby you can save 30% on Lightroom 2 by buying it together with Photoshop… This popular deal has been in place since Lightroom 2 launched on July 29, 2008, and it’s now ending on June 7th. So after almost two years, perhaps one can speculate – why would such offer terms now be wrapping up? Could it be because Lightroom 2 may soon no longer be available for purchase, possibly, and replaced with something else? Nobody outside of Adobe can say for sure of course, but we’ll soon find out how meaningful this might be – and if the LR2 offer could be followed by a similar one for a future version.

So put it all together and we could be looking at only a question of weeks now until the final release and delivery of Adobe Lightroom 3… One can hope anyway, and with a bit of luck the upgrade price will stay at $99.

[UPDATE (June 6th) – A new user report in the forums could be confirming: "Lightroom 3 is going to be annouced this monday or tuesday (7th or 8th of June). heard it from the adobe spokesman from pma australia 2010. he confirmed it when demonstrating Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2."]

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Yes, CS5 is out! It looks like a phenomenal release, and we have full coverage – including new products, pricing, configurations, system reqs, videos, “what’s new” feature lists, and more:

• Creative Suite 5 Product Overview  
• CS5 Full Product Configuration Matrix
• CS5 Complete System Requirements
• CS5 Pricing for Commercial and Education
• What’s New in Photoshop CS5  
• What’s New in Dreamweaver CS5  
• What’s New in Illustrator CS5  
• What’s New in InDesign CS5  
• What’s New in Flash Pro CS5  
• All About New Flash Catalyst CS5  
• What’s New in Contribute CS5
• What’s New in Premiere Pro CS5  
• What’s New in After Effects CS5  

ALL CS5 products are immediately available for purchase and instant download, with free shipping on all Adobe orders over €500/£350 in Europe and the U.K. (no coupon or promo code is required)…

On Adobe’s site: If you’re considering upgrading from your current software, here’s a helpful upgrade guide. Also new is an excellent FAQ covering purchasing policies and key product changes… The online documentation for all CS5 products also just went up.

Lastly and importantly, the CS5 free trial downloads and Student and Teacher Editions
(up to 80% off) are also now available!

[UPDATE (May 13th) – Adobe CS5 is now shipping and downloadable in 16 languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Korean.]

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Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 could be released as soon as next week. What’s more, the free trial downloads and Student and Teacher Editions will be available on the same day. That’s the latest word from Terry White, Worldwide Design Evangelist for Adobe Systems, at an online Q&A session yesterday afternoon…

Here’s the dialogue:

Question: When will CS5 hit the shelves? When I called Adobe, they said the release date would be April 30th. Terry, can you confirm this?
Terry White: I can’t confirm or deny it, but if that’s what they told you…
Terry White: The official answer is mid-May. In any event, April 30th – if it’s April 30th – would be the time it would leave the doors of Adobe, not arrive.

Question: How about the official date for CS5 trial versions?
Terry White: Previously the release of the trials has lagged. However I’m pleased to announce that whatever the official release date is, the free trial downloads will be available the same day.

Question: And the Student (Education) Editions? Will they lag again as they did in CS4 or be out at the same time? Thank you.
Terry White: Everything should be available at the same time.

So this represents a much improved release calendar over CS4, which as we’ve previously noted wasn’t available until about four weeks after its announce­ment date, with the free trials and Education versions following a month after that… For CS5, the April 30th date above is con­firmed anecdotally by other reports here and here, and would mean everything potentially being available within eighteen days of the April 12th launch.

A ship date of next Friday also means there’s only one week left to buy/download CS4 from Adobe and get a free upgrade to CS5, as well as only one week left in our free Photoshop CS5 giveaway!

The “Ask a CS Pro” session above lasted for over an hour and there was plenty of other great information shared which we’ll be covering in a new post next week.

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[UPDATE (June 8th) – Lightroom 3 is out! Win a free upgrade.]

We think we know when Lightroom 3 is going to ship, but while we’re waiting Adobe yesterday released a new update to Lightroom 2, bringing the popular photo management package now up to version 2.7… Adobe has added support for new and additional cameras, plus some enhancements and corrections for issues in previous releases. There were also changes to improve compatibility with settings in Lightroom 3 beta 2, and lastly the Camera Raw cache limit was increased to 200GB. New camera models added include the Canon EOS 550D, Sony A450, and Panasonic G2 and G10 (see full list of Lightroom-supported cameras).

If you already own Lightroom 2, then the update to 2.7 is free and can be downloaded here for Windows or here for Macintosh (in English, French, and German). If you still have Lightroom 1 those same links can get you to version 1.4, though a full upgrade to version 2.7 is only $99. Or you can try it out first for free.

As is customary, Adobe has released new versions of Camera Raw and DNG Converter at the same time, versions 5.7 for both Windows and Mac.

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The question now is, does this apply now for CS5? Creative Suite 5 was officially announced on Monday, April 12, and CS5 is now in preorder. However, you can still buy and download CS4 on Adobe’s site. So, we are in that relevant eligibility period right now… But will it work – could you get the best of both worlds and buy or upgrade to CS4 now, and then later get a free upgrade to CS5 when you—and it—are ready?

Well the official page on the matter at Adobe is called the “post-announce upgrade policy” (for retail and educational versions) – and it has not changed since CS5 was launched. If there were any change in policy, it would already be reflected there. So Adobe’s historic policy remains in effect. Arguably this free policy and its name could be a bit clearer, but it is what it is – and probably Adobe doesn’t want to broadcast it too much.

Supporting the case is anecdotal evidence. Folks who have recently contacted Adobe have reported, “Adobe Sales con­firmed free upgrade when CS5 ships” (also here) and “you can install and run CS4 and CS5 on the same computer.”

However, the free upgrade is not automatic. It does depend on the software version and time of purchase. For example, your upgrade must be for the same platform, language, and edition as your previous version. So the short answer is that it may be possible – but you might wish to check with Adobe Customer Service (email, chat, or phone) in your particular case to verify that you qualify and request the materials to file an upgrade request, as the offer is only avail­able through Adobe directly.

In any event, rumor has it that CS5 could be shipping on April 30th and delivered by May 7th – so if you’re thinking about doing it then that could be the remaining window!

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[UPDATE (April 30th) – CS5 is now shipping!]

As you may have heard, Creative Suite 5 will be launched on April 12 with a big rollout event that Adobe anticipates over 200,000 people to sign up and attend… So we’ll all learn about what’s coming – but we won’t be able to use or download the software yet – for that we have to wait further. But when will that happen? Well, there’s a lot of mis­information and stray guesses out there about when the shipping date(s) will be, so we thought it might be instructive to take a look at exactly how things happened last time for CS4, eighteen months ago…

So here is our analysis on what CS5’s important dates will be, if the CS4 model is followed – although please note these are our own working estimates and not from Adobe:

Confirming this analysis to some extent comes actual word from Adobe, although not widely disseminated… Buried deep inside a transcript of last week’s first-quarter earnings conference call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was quoted as saying in response to an analyst’s question about the availability of CS5:

I know there’s been some confusion about what we mean by “launch” versus what we mean by “ship.” On April 12th, we’ll talk a lot more about the new features and function­alities of the suites, the various product configurations, and what we’ve done with pricing. We have some new products which will factor into the pricing moving forward. And then traditionally, four weeks later or so, you tend to ship the English version followed by the major language versions a few weeks after that. The early feedback has been very positive.

So there you have it – hopefully installing in May. Now the next most commonly-asked question out there is, “if I buy CS4 now, will I get a free upgrade when CS5 ships?” Also known as the Adobe free upgrade “grace period” question… We’ll cover that in a coming article.

[UPDATE (May 6th) – Adobe CS5 French and German versions are now available / Français Maintenant Disponible / Deutsch Jetzt Verfügbar]
[UPDATE (May 10th) – CS5 is now also shipping and downloadable in Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Portuguese.]

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Naturally there are a lot of details left to unfold but here are some of the earliest:

And the pithy invitation:

With the right tools, your creative horizon changes. A tree is still timber, but suddenly in a whole new way. Old ideas germinate again, and new ideas branch into unexpected opportunities. Welcome to Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 – software that will allow you to confidently reach more people, more effectively, in more places, with whatever masterpiece you can imagine.

Join us for the exclusive Global Online Launch Event, Monday, April 12, 2010. Be one of the first in the world to see new game-changing features, and join the conversa­tions leading up to the excitement!

The launch site also offers a collection of eight ten “sneak peek” videos, plus social media updates for major Creative Suite products, so check it out… And we’ll have more coverage of the Adobe CS5 rollout right here as it progresses to the launch date.

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[UPDATE (April 16th) – We've put together new estimates on likely CS5 shipping timeframes, plus information on Adobe's "free upgrade" grace period for CS4.]

When will Adobe Creative Suite 5 be released? That seems to be a big question of the season… Now that it’s March, let’s take another look. If you search the Adobe site for CS5, you’ll find some good tidbits, particularly about Flash Pro CS5 and Photoshop CS5, but little that’s concrete on timing.

But if you look to coverage of a financial conference the CEO spoke at last week, the Wall Street Journal writes: “CS5 is slated for release in April, though Narayen wouldn’t comment on a release time frame at the conference. Narayen said Adobe will ship its new version of Flash around the same time as CS5, in the first half of this year. ‘Data points and reviews point to a really solid release’ of CS5, he said.”

So it sounds like at this point there is still no official date from the company, but the financial community (whose jobs depend on researching this type of info) is expecting it to be available in the mid-spring. And if it were to come three years after the CS3 release, and eighteen months after CS4, then it would be in the second half of April – so with any luck, not too much longer to wait…

What’s more, Adobe has historically offered a “grace period” of sorts with major product releases, wherein if you buy the current version within a certain window of the new release, you can get the current software now plus a free upgrade to the new version when it comes out. Meaning quite possibly, you could buy a CS4 product and then get CS5 later at no additional cost…

We’ll have more specifics on that program here as the CS5 release date approaches, plus full coverage of launch details, so stay tuned.

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“SAN JOSE, Calif.–Adobe Systems today announced Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere® Elements 8, the highly anticipated new versions of the No. 1 selling consumer photo- and video-editing software. Available as standalone products or as a single retail package, the bundle offers the most complete photo and video solution by seamlessly integrating two powerful, yet easy-to-use, products. With this landmark release, Adobe has … [continues]“

OK, we’ve had a look inside these new products and there are a lot of cool new features, much inherited from their big brothers Photoshop and Premiere Pro CS4. In addition to many new automated options and smart editing tools for saving time and effort on your photos and videos, there is also much improved media management, tagging, and integration. Yet the Elements versions remain significantly easier to learn and use (not to mention less expensive) than their CS4 brethren…

So what exactly is in there, and what exactly is new? Fortunately Adobe has put together a great feature comparison page giving all the details.

Other points of note: In contrast to version 7, Adobe is issuing a brand new and fully-featured version for the Mac with Photoshop Elements 8. And PC World magazine just published a product review where they gave Elements 8 a Superior rating with a score of 94 out of 100.

Best of all: Both versions are available immediately for full download with 30-day free trials… And right now there’s a $30 rebate.

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