Last October, Adobe unveiled the new CC 2019 Release, which the company says is the biggest product launch since they first introduced Creative Cloud over six years ago. Pam Clark, Senior Director for Photoshop, exclaimed, “Today is by far the largest product announcement and launch experience of my career on the Photoshop team, and at Adobe. We have never delivered so much amazing new innovation to customers on the same day. I can’t wait to see what you create!”

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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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Let’s face it, Adobe’s traditional product prices seemed expensive over the years, espe­cially if you’re on a student’s budget. The last perpetual version available, Creative Suite 6 from 2012, historically had full prices ranging from $399 for Dream­weaver through $999 for Photoshop Extended and on up to $2,599 upfront for the Master Collection suite, which contained all CS6 applications. As cool and powerful as this software was, it’s hard to afford when you’re in school – even after the student/teacher discount.

Adobe eventually stopped selling CS6, as the version reached EOL and end of support – but fortunately the company still offers deep discounts for education customers on the latest CC release. A few years ago, in fact, they increased the discount on Creative Cloud to up to 70% off the regular prices. And while there are a lot of misconceptions about CC, the main products like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, etc., still download and run on your desktop as normal.

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What are the differences between the types of Creative Cloud membership? This is a question we get a lot, so here’s a handy comparison guide on the major differences between Creative Cloud for Teams vs. CC for Individuals. In another article, we already covered the all the differences between Creative Cloud Student & Teacher vs. regular editions.

Creative Cloud for Teams is Adobe’s volume licensing solution for businesses, studios, design shops, agencies, companies, offices, schools, and other organizations. It includes everything that CC for Individuals does, but gives you substantially more features and capabilities for managing and working with different users. It’s meant for groups (such as small to midsize businesses and departments) with multiple seats using the products at the same time. For large businesses, Adobe recommends Creative Cloud for Enterprise.

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Six 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 18 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 hundreds of 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 (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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With over 15 million customers having already signed up in the six years since it launched, Adobe’s Creative Cloud (CC) product line has been a success exceeding even the company’s own expecta­tions.  Still, there are a lot of misconceptions out there that we see from time to time, or that some folks seem to believe… (do you?)  Here below we dispel and debunk the top 10 most common myths we’ve heard – and hopefully even if you already know the scoop or use Creative Cloud you’ll pick something up… read on!

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Adobe CC 2020 Giveaway!]

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.

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[UPDATE (Nov. 2019) – Check out Adobe’s new 2019 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals!]

Adobe is having a worldwide sale with money-saving deals lined up through Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 (and beyond), and we’ve got the complete guide below… There are some amazing offers for major products in this “season of savings” – with discounts as much as 74% off the regular prices!

The company is running four major promotions for the all-new Creative Cloud (CC) 2019. These are the all-time lowest prices ever offered on these popular products. The holiday deals begin today, November 16th, and will run continuously until Friday, Nov­ember 30th (extended!) at 11:59pm Pacific Time. So don’t delay, as these values only come once per year!

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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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