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 – the official set of user manuals that can answer quite a few customer questions, and also be a great resource if you don’t use a product yet but want to find out more about it…

This exists in searchable and downloadable form for all major Adobe applications, including the Creative Cloud, Creative Suite, Lightroom, Acrobat, Photoshop Elements, etc. – for all recent releases on both Windows and macOS.

For example, every so often we receive a question on how to save back to earlier versions from Adobe InDesign… Fortunately, this is answered in the “Saving Documents” section in InDesign’s online manual. (And for all the cases like these, we also put together a special roadmap for CC file compatibility.)

Related: Do you believe any of these? The 10 Most Common Myths About Creative Cloud

Each Adobe reference below can be downloaded as a complete offline ebook if you want (more about this below)… These books are substantial – the latest “Photoshop Help & Tutorials” hand­book is over 1,000 pages alone, and collectively the entire set of manuals for all Creative Cloud 2020 apps totals 7,000+ pages!

So here below are the direct links to all the PDF guides to bookmark for your future reference:

• Creative Cloud (CC) or Creative Suite (CS6, CS5, CS4, or CS3):

  

  Product	CC 2020 Release	Older Versions
  In addition to English, these guides are also available in French (fr), German (de), and Japanese (ja). To download in another language, copy the manual’s link, change the “/en/” to the other language code, and then paste that into the address bar of your browser.
  Photoshop	Download	Download
  Lightroom	Download	—
  Lightroom Classic	Download	Download
  Illustrator	Download	Download
  InDesign	Download	Download
  InCopy	—	Download
  Adobe XD	Download	—
  Dreamweaver	Download	Download
  Animate / Flash Pro	Download	An / Fl
  Adobe Muse	—	Download
  Premiere Pro	Download	Download
  After Effects	Download	Download
  Audition	Download	Download
  Prelude	Download	Download
  Premiere Rush	Download	—
  Media Encoder	Download	Download
  Adobe Bridge	Download	Download

• Adobe Acrobat:
  • Acrobat DC Pro/Standard and Reader
  • Acrobat XI, X, 9, 8, 7 Pro/Standard and Reader



• Other Adobe CC/CS applications:
  • Behance
  • Adobe Encore
  • Fireworks
  • Edge Animate
  • Flash Builder
  • PhoneGap Build
  • SpeedGrade
  • Adobe Story
  • Adobe Fonts / Typekit
  • Creative Cloud Learn
• Elements line:
  • Photoshop Elements 2020 and 2018 or 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7
  • Premiere Elements 2020 and 2018 or 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7
  • Elements Organizer 2020 and 2018 or 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8
• Photoshop Lightroom 6, 5, 4, 3, 2
• Captivate 2019 and 9, 8, 7, 6, 5.5, 5
• Presenter 11 and Presenter Video Express 11
• FrameMaker 2019 and 2017, 2015, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8
• RoboHelp 2019 and 2017, 2015, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7
• ColdFusion 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, MX 6.1
• Adobe Connect 9.5, 9, 8, 7
• LiveCycle ES4, ES3, ES2, ES
• All other products

We’re long past the point of printed books or manuals in a box – it’s all live and living online, updated regularly by the Adobe documentation team…

Important! If you’re going to be offline for a while or just prefer to read it all in an ebook format, there are full PDF versions available for download for each application – just grab that and poof, you have a full up-to-date manual in digital book form, for free. This is great for sending to a Kindle, or for reading on an iPad where it can be opened and stored in iBooks.

To download any of these software user manuals in PDF form:

• For Creative Cloud/Suite pages above – just click on “PDF manuals” or “Previous versions.”
• For all other tools above – look for the “Help PDFs” near the top or left side of the screen.

And to continue learning, don’t miss dozens more free books for many Adobe products, covering recent versions of all major applications.

See Also