Adobe’s pro video tools have made enormous advancements in recent years. So much so, that the older CS versions are hardly recognizable when compared to the newest CC editions, in terms of new features and performance improvements added since then. Adobe has really poured a lot of effort into these tools, and it shows: the current video suite has gained significant adoption and is widely considered a leader in the industry. All of their video applications are available/included in the complete Creative Cloud (“All Apps”) subscription offering direct from the company.

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[UPDATE – Also see our Winter Creative Cloud 2020 Giveaway!]

MAX 2016 – the big annual conference intersecting creativity and Adobe technology – is coming up this fall in San Diego, 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, plus one US$400-off ticket savings, both courtesy of our friends at Adobe Systems!

Adobe MAX 2016, The Creativity Conference – running from November 2-4 – will be chock full of expert keynotes and presentations, technical and how-to ses­sions, product announce­ments and sneak peeks, evening events and parties, networking and meeting the teams, and possibly some surprises… The show is an amazing experi­ence where they really take care of you from start to finish while you soak up all the growth and learning you can.

In fact, many of the best courses and tutorial sessions from the last MAX were recorded and are still available on-demand for free viewing, covering all Adobe applications.

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[UPDATE (October 2016) – We have some very good news – Adobe has finally published the new installers. Please see our new post here: At Last! The Adobe CC 2015.5 Direct Download Links (2016 Release) We’re sorry about the delay!]

[UPDATE (Nov. 2019) – The latest CC 2020 direct links are also now available!]

Early this morning, Adobe launched major updates to its flagship Creative Cloud tools and services. This June 2016 release includes dramatic new features in Adobe’s key desktop applications, performance enhancements across Creative Cloud (CC) and exciting updates to Adobe Stock. As always, all upgrades to all CC desktop apps are available for download by Creative Cloud members as part of their membership at no additional cost.

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[UPDATE (November 2018) – These links still work to download the old Acrobat DC 2016/2015 trials. We also now have the all-new Acrobat DC 2019 Direct Download Links!]

Adobe Acrobat DC 2016 is now shipping!  “DC” stands for Document Cloud, which is Adobe’s new set of integrated online services that helps people and businesses better manage critical documents. At the heart of Document Cloud is Acrobat DC – the industry standard for creating, sharing and editing PDFs – which was completely reengineered last year for the initial DC 2015 milestone release.

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After decades of 30-day free trials for its flagship creative applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and all the others, today Adobe announced that going forward, the length of the trial period for Creative Cloud (i.e., the CC 2015 desktop apps) will be standardized worldwide at 7 days.

The company has been running some tests over the past couple months, and says the changes better align with how individuals are actually using the trial software – meaning the degree and duration of time they use them the most after initial installation. By moving to seven days, Adobe feels they can follow up better with the customer when the experience is freshest than if it happened a month later. It also gives users greater incentive to bump up the priority of the new software evaluations. Given the accelerating pace of change in technology (and pretty much everything else moving faster these days), these findings aren’t entirely surprising.

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One of the most frequent upgrade questions we get is what’s new, what’s different, or what’s changed between the new release of Acrobat and previous versions? Adobe Acrobat DC 2016 just launched today, and if you’re counting numerically (… 9, X, XI, DC 2015, DC 2016), then this is the 13th major release of one of Adobe’s biggest products with over 30 million customers. So put simply, what are the major new features and advance­ments in the 2016 Release of Acrobat DC (Pro or Standard), versus DC 2015, or 2012’s Acrobat XI or even 2010’s Acrobat X?

When the Document Cloud first arrived a year ago – and Acrobat DC 2015 along with it – there were some significant changes to how the software was purchased… While the desktop Acrobat Pro/Standard tool is still sold standalone with a perpetual (or “Classic”) license, many of the newer capabilities and services are only available via the Acrobat DC subscription (or “Continuous”) bundle. It’s called “Continuous” because subscribers receive all ongoing product upgrades as soon as they are available, ensuring you are always running the latest-and-greatest software with the complete featureset.

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[UPDATE (December 2019) – In its full-year 2019 earnings call, Adobe said they grew Creative annual recurring revenue by 21% over 2018. Adding on to the estimated 15 million Creative Cloud subscribers from a year ago, this gives a likely new total of 18+ million subscribers.]

[UPDATE (December 2018) – A year ago, analysts pegged the number of Creative Cloud customers at 12 million: “We expect Adobe to end 2017 with 12 million subscribers for its CC services.” Most recently, Adobe stated in their Dec. 2018 conference call, “Within Digital Media, we achieved another strong quarter with our Creative business. Creative revenue grew 26% year-over-year in Q4.” Thus we estimate the current total to be approx. 15 million subscribers.]

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The Creative Cloud is cool because it offers access all major tools that Adobe makes at an affordable price… But here are four recurring challenges we still see out there since Adobe discontinued boxes and switched over to Cloud-only application downloads:

1. Folks with slow or limited Internet connections who need to complete large (multi-gigabyte) downloads to get started with their Creative Cloud memberships.
2. Customers who’d like to download the CC software using one computer with a high speed network, but install it on another, different machine (or more) without redownloading.
3. Users who just want to maintain secure backup copies of the offline CC 2019 installers should they ever be without connectivity and need to quickly reinstall their products.
4. People who have difficulties with the new Creative Cloud Desktop application manager (maybe not showing apps or updates) and want to download their tools without using it.

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Here’s an incredible new resource that you should not miss – and even bookmark/share… It’s a compre­hensive professional training course on how to best use Adobe Photoshop from O’Reilly’s InfiniteSkills – normally costing US$130, but now completely FREE with no catch. It includes 13 hours of high-quality instruction broken out into 23 chapters with 166 video tutorials (in HD or SD), covering all major aspects of Photoshop – the world’s most popular graphics and photo editing software – at no cost!

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[UPDATE (May 2016) – Adobe just reduced the length of all CC free trials from 30 to 7 days… So the approach below will still work, but would triple the period from 7 to 21 days.]

How long are the free trials for Adobe software? Most people would say 30 days – but practically speak­ing, it’s actually almost 50% longer, at 44 days.  Here’s why, and how you can do it…

After downloading and installing Adobe’s free trial software – whether it’s the latest major release CC 2015 (have you tried it yet?), CS6, Acrobat, Captivate, or Lightroom – your official free trial will begin for 30 calendar days from the date you first run the application (like Photoshop) on your computer.

Once you reach the end of that month – if you haven’t already purchased the product – then that free trial period will end and all the files you created will still be yours, but the software itself will no longer start on your system. And redownloading or reinstalling it won’t give you a new free trial.

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