With over 15 million paid members for Creative Cloud and growing, we often get this question from readers: “What’s a good book to get started with the most popular Adobe tools?” While there are a lot of great CC books for sale on Amazon, why not begin with an excellent title that’s available to everyone for free, and that you can download instantly?

Over the years, we’ve compiled a collection of over 30 free books that you can download and use for learning all of Adobe’s different creative tools… But there’s one volume that always stands out as a favorite – and even better, it has just been republished in a brand new expanded edition for the CC 2019 tools.

So if you’re just getting going with (or would like a solid primer covering) the core Creative Cloud design tools, then what better than a step-by-step guide that will teach you the essentials of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe XD, and Muse from the ground up?

So here it is: the very helpful “Adobe CC Design Basics” that will give you all of this for free, courtesy of author Professor Thomas Payne… The book works by intro­ducing and explain­ing the tools in a logical way that builds upon what is previ­ously learned. These applica­tions present a vast array of buttons and gadgets that can be over­whelming to the new user. This book makes sense of it all, not showing how every­thing works, but instead giving a found­ation and a path to learn about all those controls and what they can do for you.

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Longtime readers know that we offer a series of free books for Adobe software with over 30 different titles that anyone can download on how to best use the different major products… These books have been extremely popular and well-received.

But since Adobe software is all about creating, for a long time there was a missing part: a collection of free books simply about building your creativity – something that everyone in the world can use and benefit from… So here is that set! You can legally download and use the five PDF e-books below to inspire your own creative process and help improve your work, no matter what you do in life. They are (in our view) all easy, enjoyable, and enriching reads.

Book #1: The Creative Aid Handbook (142 Pages)

Co-creators Richard Tapp and Nicole Smith of Kooroo Kooroo rightly describe The Creative Aid Handbook as a outside-of-the-box resource to get your creative juices flowing: “We wrote, designed, and illustrated a book featuring unusual tips to nurture your creative well-being, boost your creative intellect and foster internal inspiration. Meant to serve as a mini-resource for your creative projects and food for your creative thoughts. Read more…

Here’s the brand new edition of a very handy resource from James Wamser – a complete reference to all versions and features of Adobe Photoshop from CS1 to CC 2019… Similar to his InDesign handbook, it’s called the Adobe Photoshop New Features Guide: From CS to CC – and this 97-page ebook is available for free download now:

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Last month, Adobe shipped the all-new CC 2019 set of tools and services – a milestone marking the seventh major release of the CC product line, which replaced CS6 from 2012. This latest CC version contains thousands of new features and advancements compared to CS6 (across all creative applica­tions), and it is available only via Creative Cloud membership – a community which now surpasses 15 million paid subscribers.

Adobe CC 2019 is also known as the Creative Cloud 2019 Release… And that is exactly what we’re giving away for free below, and this offer is open to everyone world­wide.

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Over the years, we’ve put together a large collection of free Adobe books that we share with our readers here… This extensive set of helpful, no-cost books has now grown to over 30 different titles that you can legally download and use royalty-free, forever.

These digital books cover Creative Cloud, Creative Suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Muse, Lightroom and more – but until now, we haven’t always had a good and recent offering for Adobe Animate CC (formerly Flash Professional).

Fortunately, this has changed with the publication of the new “Creating Multi­platform Animations with Animate CC” guidebook, which comes from award-winning Adobe Education Leader and longtime Animate guru Joseph Labrecque.

Mr. Labrecque conducted a paid Animate CC workshop at the Adobe MAX conference this month, and is now making the class’s training materials available to the general public completely free of charge. This special offer includes the main 59-page course workbook together with 9 MB of sample working assets, all of which you can download for free here.

Here is the overview description of this course:

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Did you make it to MAX this year? Adobe’s Creativity Conference once again broke records with 14,000 attendees coming together in Los Angeles last week, a full doubling from 7,000 only 3 years ago… In fact, it was the largest gathering of talented creative professionals that there has ever been in one room, anytime in history!

Those who were there enjoyed major new product launches, inspirational key­notes from creative luminaries, hundreds of enriching training sessions, countless opportunities for networking with colleagues, access to the latest cool technology on the Pavilion floor, meeting the Adobe product teams in person, and the always-mind-blowing “Sneak Peek” demos of amazing new features under development.

But if you didn’t make it, no worries – believe it or not, you can still tap into many of the best resources from the comfort of your own laptop, tablet, or phone!

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Holiday CC 2019 Giveaway!]

MAX 2018 – the big annual conference intersecting creativity and Adobe technology – is returning this fall to Los Angeles, California… And continuing our long tradition of free Adobe giveaways, we’ve got one free regular full conference pass (worth US$1,595) to give away, courtesy of our friends at Adobe Systems! Plus, an exclusive US$400-off MAX ticket discount code that’s available to everyone… (details below)

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Holiday CC 2019 Giveaway!]

Last fall, Adobe launched the all-new CC 2018 product line, a major milestone of creative tools and services marking the sixth major release of the CC product line. This latest version contains thousands of new features and advancements compared to CS6 (across all creative applica­tions), and this product is available only via Creative Cloud membership – a community which now surpasses 15 million paid subscribers.

Adobe CC 2018 is also known as the Creative Cloud 2018 Release… And that is exactly what we’re giving away for free below, and this offer is open to everyone world­wide.

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Some incredible news out this morning: Adobe has announced they’re making their popular new experience design tool – Adobe XD, a major part of the Creative Cloud – completely free(!) for anyone who wants to download and use it, forever:

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Adobe recently added a brand new product to the Lightroom ecosystem, surprisingly called “Lightroom CC.” This cloud-based photo service is different from the longstanding version of Lightroom that we know and love, the desktop-focused application which was simultaneously renamed to be “Lightroom Classic CC.”

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