This strange, tumultuous year has changed the way we all live and work. To help creative people around the world overcome the unique challenges of 2020, Adobe is launching today the Creative Cloud 2021 release – with hundreds of improvements to help creatives level up their skills, work efficiently together, get more done, and succeed in new forms of creation. And fittingly, it’s all happening online this week at the annual MAX conference, which is 100% free and 100% virtual for the very first time.

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For decades now, Adobe has provided industry-standard standalone installers for their creative products, for many valid reasons… Recent examples include the company publicly posting the direct download links for the CC 2019 and CC 2018 releases. In our view, the need is strong and they should continue to do the same going forward.

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HUGE NEWS! – Adobe has just launched a brand new curated collection of over 75,000 completely free photos, vectors, illustrations, templates, and videos from talented Stock providers… This new Adobe Stock Free collection is available for everyone to download at all times – plus these high-quality assets meet the same standards as the paid collection, so all of them come with a royalty-free commercial license forever. Check out the free Stock here, and download away!

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Every year, Adobe’s creative product launches seem to get bigger – and this year is no exception… This morning, with over 500,000 people attending the first-ever all-virtual (and completely free!) MAX conference, Adobe rolled out the new CC 2021 Release, which has to be the largest product rollout since they first introduced Creative Cloud over eight years ago.

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Well, MAX just wrapped up its first-ever all-virtual conference and Adobe broke all records with over half a million attendees tuning in from all over the world for three full days! But the best part is the majority of the sessions were captured on video and are being offered online – for free! In other words, pick your favorite Adobe tools and you can learn the latest tips, tricks, and techniques from the top instructors in the field from the comfort of your laptop, tablet, or phone.

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Last week at the annual MAX conference, Adobe launched the new 2020 release of Creative Cloud – and everyone wants to know what’s new, what’s different, and what’s changed between CC 2020 and the previous CC 2019, CC 2018, CC 2017, CC 2015, CC 2014, CC 2013, or 2012’s Creative Suite 6?  Or more to the point, what are the key new features and advancements in the 2020 upgrade versus prior versions?

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With over 22 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 2021 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, and Adobe XD from the ground up?

So here it is: the very helpful “Adobe 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 apps present a vast array of options 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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Eight years ago, Adobe acquired Behance – the leading online community and social media plat­form for creative professionals, which is often referred to as “The LinkedIn for Creatives.” Back then, Behance had about 1 million members. Since that time, with Behance’s inclusion into Creative Cloud (even with the free level), growth and participation have exploded – and the Behance community now boasts over 24 million members receiving 70 million project views per month.

With Behance, you can easily upload your photo­graphs, projects, or portfolios and gain a fantastic way to showcase, share, and get exposure for your work as well as receive feedback from your creative peers, and get inspired for future work. You can publish many types of media such as images, text, illustrations, video and audio, and follow statistics on how many views your projects are getting, and potentially make money. There’s even a helpful job list for creatives and freelancers, with over 1,000 available employment opportunities.

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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 (over 11 years ago now!), 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 243-Page Book
• Get the Brand New 51-Page Guidebook to Learn After Effects Free
• Learn Animate Free – Download 59-Page Guidebook + Assets
• Download Now: The Illustrator New Features Guidebook
• Learn Adobe Dreamweaver CC + CS6 – Download 79-Page Book
• Free! Download 30 Adobe Books at No Cost, Learn All Products

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Adobe’s Creative Cloud has been available for over eight years now and continues to gain strong adoption in the worldwide marketplace, the latest published figures show.

Per the company’s recent Financial Analyst Meeting, “the Creative Cloud business has grown ~85% in three years.” Three years ago, at the end of 2017, analysts pegged the number of CC paid subscribers at 12 million. So, updating for year-end 2020, this gives an estimated new total of 22+ million subscribers.

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