Last month, Adobe unveiled the all-new CC 2018 Release, which they say is the biggest product launch since Adobe first introduced Creative Cloud over five years ago. And from what we’ve seen, it looks to be true. There are major updates across the entire suite of tools and services, including entirely new CC desktop tools as well as significant new features and performance improvements to existing applications, and even some surprises.

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[UPDATE (Nov. 2018) – Check out Adobe’s new 2018 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals!]

Adobe is having a worldwide sale with money-saving deals lined up through Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2017 (and beyond), and we’ve got the complete guide below… Although there are fewer offers than previous years, the new specials still match the same level of discount off the regular prices as past Black Fridays.

The company is running two major promo­tions for the all-new Creative Cloud (CC) 2018. Both are the lowest prices ever offered on these popular products. The holiday deals begin today and will run continuously until Friday, Dec­ember 1st (extended!) at 11:59pm Pacific Time. So don’t delay, as these only come once per year!

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[UPDATE (Oct. 2018) – Watch 132 hours of new training & tutorials from MAX 2018!]

Did you make it to MAX this year? Adobe’s Creativity Conference broke records with 12,000 attendees coming together in Las Vegas earlier this month, double from 6,000 just a few years ago… In fact, it was the largest gathering of talented creative professionals that there has ever been in one room, anytime in history!

Those who came enjoyed major new product launches, inspirational key­notes from creative luminaries, hundreds of enriching training sessions, plentiful opportunities for networking with colleagues, access to the latest cool technology on the pavilion floor, meeting the Adobe product teams in person, the highly-anticipated “Sneak Peek” demos of amazing new features under development, and of course the famous MAX Bash party.

But if you didn’t make it, no worries – believe it or not, you can still tap into many of the best resources from the comfort of your own laptop, tablet, or phone!

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[UPDATE (Oct. 2018) – The all-new Adobe CC 2019 release has launched and is now available! See what’s new in features and all the differences compared to older versions and CS6.]

One of the most common upgrade questions we see out there is asking what’s new, what’s different, what’s better, what’s changed between Adobe’s just-launched CC 2018 release and the previous CC 2017, CC 2015.5, CC 2015, CC 2014, CC 2013, or 2012’s Creative Suite 6?  Or more fundamentally, what are the key new features and advancements in CC 2018 versus prior versions?

Now that the new CC 2018 mile­stone release is shipping world­wide, everyone is entitled to either a free upgrade or a new free trial for 7 days. Ongoing access to these tools requires a Creative Cloud mem­ber­ship (either for one app or for all of them), with discounts available for education custom­ers. Adobe says that if you look at all of the changes since CS6 to the current CC 2018 release, there have been thousands of significant updates – meaning new and enhanced features, added capabil­ities, and perfor­mance boosts – to the key creative applications.

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[UPDATE (Oct. 2018) – The all-new Adobe CC 2019 release has launched and is now available! See what’s new in features and all the differences compared to older versions and CS6.]

Last week, Adobe announced the immediate availability of the all-new CC 2018 release, the next generation of Creative Cloud with hundreds of new features and advancements across their product line focusing on innovative new tools, improved performance, smoother workflow & connectivity, and some of that Adobe magic…  CC 2018 is the next major release following the CC 2017, CC 2015, CC 2014, and CC 2013 versions, which in turn replaced CS6 from 2012.

The 15 upgraded CC desktop applications are Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, InCopy, Animate (formerly Flash Pro), Muse, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Prelude, Media Encoder, Bridge, Camera Raw, and the rebranded Lightroom Classic. In addition, there are four brand new 1.0 products: Adobe XD for user eXperience Design, Adobe Dimension (previously Project Felix) for 2D to 3D compositing, Character Animator for 2D animation, and an all-new cloud-centric photography service by the name of… Lightroom CC.

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Holiday CC 2019 Giveaway!]

Last fall at the annual MAX conference, Adobe launched the current version of Creative Cloud, CC 2017… This major release was announced, demoed, and shipped all on day one of the show.

This year, MAX is happening next month, from October 18-20. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to presume that the next major version of Creative Cloud – CC 2018 – could well be released in the same fashion and timeframe. (For example, see the Photoshop CC “Sneak Peek” video below.)

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Holiday CC 2019 Giveaway!]

Late last year, Adobe launched the all-new CC 2017 product line, a major milestone of creative tools and services marking the fifth 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.

Adobe CC 2017 is also known as the Creative Cloud 2017 Release… And that is exactly what we’re giving away for free below, and this offer is open to everyone world­wide.

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Almost five years ago, in the spring of 2012, Adobe launched two major products at one time: Creative Suite 6 and the Creative Cloud. The Creative Suite 6 suites were well received and cost from US$1,300 to $2,600 – while Creative Cloud, a subscription to their full range of creative applications, had a much lower cost of entry and gave customers access to the CS6 tools and services, as well as ongoing upgrades. A year later, Adobe announced that CS6 would be their last perpetual software release, and there would be no CS7.

Since then, the Creative Cloud has evolved to include the newer milestone releases CC 2013, CC 2014, CC 2015, CC 2015.5, and now CC 2017. Over this time, thousands of new features and improve­ments have been delivered exclusively to Creative Cloud members, while the original CS6 release has remained largely static. By law, with the purchasing model that CS6 had, Adobe could not legally add significant new features to the traditional release.

By June of 2014, after the first two major CC versions, Adobe described new CS6 sales as “de minimis,” with the vast majority of customers choosing Creative Cloud instead.

Adobe did continue providing maintenance (bug/security) fixes to CS6 and refreshing Camera Raw through July 2015, over 3 years after CS6 came out – but then finally discontinued support in order to evolve the platform and pursue further innovations in image processing and workflow technology.

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With the demise of Apple Aperture, and since Adobe dropped the price of both Lightroom + Photoshop to US$9.99/month with the CC Photography Plan, Lightroom has effectively become a de facto standard for digital photography management software…

As Lightroom’s usage and sophistication grows, and as image sizes and photo collections also continue to grow, there has been increasing need for a comprehensive guide to ensure the program is always running as fast as it can, and is optimized for best performance on your system.

Fortunately, widely-acclaimed author and ‘Lightroom Queen’ Victoria Bampton has just published such a guide – and better still, she is offering this helpful new book to the public for free!

The Adobe Lightroom Performance Guide is now out, and contains 11 chapters on every­thing you ever wanted to know about Lightroom and speed. It is available as a free downloadable book in PDF format. Here is an overview of the topics it covers:

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The Adobe Research team is exploring what Photoshop would be like with a 3D canvas instead of 2D… With the Interactive Sculpting project shown the video above, instead of drawing and manipu­lating pixels, the tool operates on three-dimensional voxels. An artist uses all the familiar tools from Photoshop like brushes, layers, and filters to sculpt 3D objects. It also showcases some innovative tablet interaction model that uses simultaneous touch and pen input: the user rotates objects with one hand while sculpting with a pen at the same time.

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