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.

Read more…

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:

Read more…

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.

Read more…

A reader asked us about a notice he received from Adobe regarding an upcoming increase in CC subscription pricing in some countries. Per the company’s email, the Creative Cloud membership costs in certain areas will be changing due to currency fluctuations. This only affects a relatively small number of countries, but what exactly does this mean, and why is it happening?

Here is an excerpt from Adobe’s official statement about the pricing adjustment in these geographies:

Read more…

[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 smashed all records with 10,000 attendees coming together in San Diego earlier this month, double from 5,000 just a few years ago… And that was despite the recent rise in the cost of a full conference pass to US$1,595.

For the price of that ticket, participants 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 jaw-dropping new features under development, and of course the famous MAX Bash party.

Read more…

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

Two weeks ago, Adobe shipped the all-new CC 2017 set of tools and services – a milestone 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.

Read more…

[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 2016 (and beyond), and we’ve got the complete guide below… There are some nice offers on tap for major products in this “season of savings” – with discounts as much as 68% off the regular prices!

The company is running two major promo­tions for the all-new Creative Cloud (CC) 2017. Both are the lowest prices ever offered on these popular products. The holiday deals begin today and will run continuously until Friday, Decem­ber 2nd at 11:59pm Pacific Time. (Extended!)

The two big offers are:

— Creative Cloud 20% Off: Normally $49.99/month for new customers signing up for an annual plan – now the complete Adobe CC member­ship will be available at a special discounted rate of $39.99/month (or £36.59/€47.59/A$45.99 including VAT) for one year. To go one better, you can save $10/month on the best package available, Creative Cloud ‘All Apps’ together with Adobe Stock. No previous software owner­ship or other qualifications are necessary to receive these reductions.

Read more…

[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.]

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

The 15 upgraded desktop applications are Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, InCopy, Animate (formerly Flash Pro), Muse, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Character Animator, Audition, Prelude, Media Encoder, Bridge, and Experience Design (XD). All current Creative Cloud members receive an automatic upgrade to the 2017 Release, and all of the new free trial downloads are also now live online. As before, the new tools and services are available via budget-friendly annual or monthly memberships. Creative Cloud membership continues to expand at an acceler­ating pace around the world, with now over 15 million paid customers having signed up.

Read more…

[UPDATE (Nov. 2017) – These still work to download the original CC 2017 installers. If you’re looking for direct links to the newest CC 2018 versions, then see this post.]

The new Adobe CC 2017 release was announced last week, including 15 upgraded desktop applications with new features across the board plus other major advancements… And there’s no wait: the Creative Cloud 2017 software is available immediately for worldwide download via the CC Desktop App… This means everyone gets either a free upgrade or a free trial – but some folks want or need to access the new tools directly without using Adobe’s download/app manager.

Adobe has just published an initial set of direct download links for the CC 2017 release, and you’ll find them in the table below. These links go to the authentic and secure files residing on Adobe’s servers, are guaranteed genuine, safe, legal, and will not change. They give you instant access plus the ability to use your own download manager (DLM) if you have difficulty with what Adobe normally employs and want to get the tools or trials without it… They can also come in handy if you want offline CC 2017 installers to use, store, or back up with (i.e., copy to USB flash drive, burn to DVD media, install on other systems or unconnected machines, etc).

Read more…

[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 2017 release and the previous CC 2015.5, CC 2015, CC 2014, CC 2013, or 2012’s Creative Suite 6 – or even the older CS5, CS4, CS3?  Or more fundamentally, what are the key new features and advancements in CC 2017 versus prior versions?

Now that the new CC 2017 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 2017 release, there have been thousands of significant updates – meaning new and enhanced features, added capabil­ities, and perfor­mance boosts – to the key creative applications.

Read more…