With one year wrapped up and a new one just beginning, it seemed a perfect time to put together a review of the best and most-shared posts published here since our site launched in 2009 (almost 10 years ago!), including some very popular free books.

These are the top posts that consistently have the highest readership on our site, month after month, covering all major Adobe software products…  They’re broken out by topic below in case you’ve missed any, or are new here – so bookmark, share, and enjoy!

Free Adobe Books

• Download Adobe CC Design Basics, Free! New 228-Page Book
• Two Free Books! Get the Lightroom Quick Start Guides (108 Pgs)
• Learn Animate Free – Download 59-Page Guidebook + Assets
• Download Now: The InDesign New Features Guidebook
• Learn Adobe Dreamweaver CC + CS6 – Download New Book
• Free! Download 30 Adobe Books at No Cost, Learn All Products

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[UPDATE (April 2015) – The next major release of Adobe Acrobat – the new Acrobat DC – is now shipping… Download a free trial!]

Yes – Adobe Acrobat XI has just been announced with all the details… A bit ahead of the timeframe we forecast, you can learn more about and order the new product line, as well as download the free trials. For this 11th generation of the industry standard for PDF creation tools, Adobe returns to offering two versions – Standard and Pro – plus two services that now tightly integrate with the new release: EchoSign for easily enabling legally-binding electronic signatures in your documents and FormsCentral for complete end-to-end manage­ment of online forms and surveys.

The very first version of Acrobat came out in 1993 and there have been 41 million total Acrobat units sold since then, Adobe’s biggest product ever… Acrobat and PDF continue to grow, and the statistics are impressive. Today there are more than 733 million PDF files on the public Internet and this is just a small slice of PDF usage overall, since there are many more PDF files that exist inside of companies. Over 1 billion copies of the free Adobe Reader have been distrib­uted worldwide, and over 80 million copies of Reader for Mobile devices have been downloaded, remaining the top Business App in the Apple and Android Stores.

Read more…

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

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 products such as Creative Cloud, CS6, Captivate 11, and Elements 2019, 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, legal, 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 officially 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. Read more…

[UPDATE (April 2015) – The next major release of Adobe Acrobat – the new Acrobat DC – is now shipping! Download a free trial instantly or check out what’s new in Acrobat DC vs. XI.]

One of the most frequent upgrade questions we’re seeing asked is what’s new, what’s different, or what’s changed between the new Adobe Acrobat XI (Acrobat 11) and previous versions? Or more simply put, what are the major new features in Acrobat X (Pro or Standard), versus Acrobat X or 9? Adobe calls it, “a powerful new PDF solution that rises to today’s complex document challenges,” so these kinds of answers can help decide about upgrading…

There aren’t any complete, formal reviews out yet, but here’s what some early test users are saying: “Being able to do complex things on the fly, like signing a document electron­ically or commenting on a document on an iPad, is very attractive,” and “makes it even easier and faster to create PDF forms and to auto­matically distribute and collect information with new online forms services,” plus “offers advanced document protection capabilities that are easier than ever for our staff to uniformly secure our documents.”

[ What’s the difference between the editions? See: Acrobat XI Pro vs. Standard vs. Reader ]

Adobe had four overarching goals for this release: (1) increase end-user productivity, (2) streamline collab­oration, (3) lock down information security, and (4) support working with documents on mobile devices.

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[UPDATE (April 2015) – The next major release of Adobe Acrobat – the new Acrobat DC – is now shipping… Download a free trial!]

Two weeks after its official introduction, this morning Adobe released the Acrobat XI family – the 11th generation of the world’s most popular PDF creation and reading software.

The Adobe Reader XI is out as a free download in 27 different languages, while Acrobat XI Pro and Standard are now available for purchase or (if you’d like to try the product out first on your own system) free trial download.

Celebrating its 20th birthday next year, you may wonder what new could Adobe add to this industry-standard product line to make it work better and more effectively, and enable you get your work done faster, saving time and money?  The answer is, surprisingly, a lot…

Read more…

We’ve previously featured over 30 hours of free video tutorials for Creative Suite 6, plus four hours for Lightroom 4 – so here’s a brand new collection for the recently-released Acrobat XI Pro & Standard…

In the free courses below, Adobe’s top product experts share how to get started, the basics of the software, overviews of major new features, how to use key tools and functions, plus their favorite tips and most useful techniques. In total, there are three courses with over two hours of free content, spanning 68 separate chapters.

If you need a copy of Acrobat XI Pro to get going right away, you can just download a free 30-day trial and then jump right in:

Read more…

Adobe has made available an excellent resource that’s now updated for CS6 (and CC) – a free printing handbook in the form of a 149-page downloadable e-book: The Adobe Creative Suite 6 Printing Guide. Earlier editions of this book have been out for previous releases (see the older CS5.x, CS4 and CS3 links below), but now this is fully refreshed and upgraded for the most recent versions of the products.

Read more…

We’re on the Adobe Help Forums every day and regularly see users posting queries like “Can’t install Photoshop from the Creative Cloud” or “CC 2019 won’t download,” or “my product updates aren’t working”… It could be for the free trials or for the full paid versions.

Often the issue is related to one or the other download managers (DLM) that Adobe uses to deliver its software install­ers. Over the years and for various tools, they have used the Akamai Down­load Manager, the Adobe Down­load Assistant (ADA), the Adobe Applica­tion Manager (AAM), and now the Creative Cloud’s CC Desktop App.

Adobe employs these helper utilities because their downloads are usually large – multiple gigabytes – and download managers can help correct for unreliable Internet connections, and resume a download after it has been paused or unexpectedly broken.

But it turns out there can be interactions between the DLM and configurations of your computer, web browser, anti-virus software, Internet connection, or something else which causes it not to work. Read more…

[UPDATE – Also see our new MAX 2019 Ticket Giveaway!]

Adobe Acrobat X, the world’s leading PDF document creation software, has been with us for nearly two years now, and there are questions out there on when the next version Acrobat XI will be released…

Now, nobody can actually say whether it would be called Acrobat XI or Acrobat 11, but one thing for sure is that the upgrade will be incorporated into the next release of Creative Suite (CS6.5 according to plan) and the new Creative Cloud, as well as sold separately.

It hasn’t been announced by Adobe when or what new features would be in an Acrobat XI Pro or Standard, but we do have some educated guesses…

In the meantime while we wait for developments on this front, we’re going to give away two copies of Acrobat 11 to two lucky readers here (meaning you!) as soon as it’s available…  Pricing is not definite but if version 11 costs the same as version 10, then Acrobat XI Pro would sell for US$449 for a full copy – meaning this new giveaway is valued at US$948.

And importantly, by popular request from previous giveaways, this one is open worldwide.

Read more…

[UPDATE (April 2015) – The next major release of Adobe Acrobat – the new Acrobat DC – is now shipping… Download a free trial!]

It’s been a while now since Acrobat X was released, and considering Adobe usually runs on two-year release schedules for this product, give or take, what does this imply for when Acrobat 11 (Pro/Standard/Reader) will be coming out?

That’s the question of the season – along with, of course, whether the next version will be dubbed “Acrobat 11” or “Acrobat XI”…

At present there is precious little public information out there to answer these questions.  Our best estimate would be simply to go with the release dates for the past few revisions of Acrobat and then extrapolate.

Acrobat 8 came out on November 2, 2006 – Acrobat 9 arrived on June 25, 2008 – and Acrobat X began shipping on November 15th, 2010.  So a bit of basic math would project the Acrobat 11 release date to be some­time in mid to late November 2012.  Typically, Adobe would launch (or announce) the new product lineup a few weeks before that ship date.

But if you can’t wait until release day to see (and try) it, then register your interest in a possible Acrobat XI public pre-release program. There are no guarantees on being accepted if/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 pre­release programs is to receive input on product usage and new features, plus learn about any early issues to help produce a tool that’s better for everyone.

Read more…