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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Longtime readers know that we offer a series of free books for Adobe software with over 30 different titles that anyone can download on how to best use the different major products… These books have been extremely popular and well-received.

But since Adobe software is all about creating, for a long time there was a missing part: a collection of free books simply about building your creativity – something that everyone in the world can use and benefit from… So here is that set! You can legally download and use the five PDF e-books below to inspire your own creative process and help improve your work, no matter what you do in life. They are (in our view) all easy, enjoyable, and enriching reads.

Book #1: The Creative Aid Handbook (142 Pages)

Co-creators Richard Tapp and Nicole Smith of Kooroo Kooroo rightly describe The Creative Aid Handbook as a outside-of-the-box resource to get your creative juices flowing: “We wrote, designed, and illustrated a book featuring unusual tips to nurture your creative well-being, boost your creative intellect and foster internal inspiration. Meant to serve as a mini-resource for your creative projects and food for your creative thoughts. Read more…

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 14 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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We’ve got another great resource for you – a freely-available collection of custom Photoshop textures to help set your work apart… This exclusive set of 29 different handcrafted textures has been released by War Unicorn Media at no cost and is 100% royalty-free. This collection comes complete with an 18-page guide (available online or as a download­able PDF), filled with tips and tricks on how to best use textures in your Photoshop workflow, as well as how to create your own!

Textures are super-easy to apply and use in Photoshop. Just load the texture into a new layer above your composition, and then set its Blending Mode and Opacity for how you want it to impact the photograph or image underneath. More details and ideas are given in the short tutorial video included below.

Here is James Rodel’s introduction from the accompanying guide, which is packed with examples and entitled, “Textures, the Universe, and You“:

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The 2015 edition of the Creative Cloud is the most powerful and versatile toolset Adobe has ever produced and we’re seeing a lot of demand for good training resources to learn how to best use this fast-growing product…

A while back, we posted details on over 1,000 pages of free ebooks for CS6.  But if you’re just getting started with the core CC 2015 design tools, what’s better than a step-by-step book that will teach you the essentials of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign from the ground up?

Fortunately there’s a very helpful new book you can download that will teach you all of this for free, courtesy of author Professor Thomas Payne… The way the book does this is 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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The newly-expanded 3rd edition of Pixel Perfect Precision for Photoshop is out – and it’s better than ever plus still free – so if you don’t have it yet, go grab it now…

This designer bible comes to us from respected Adobe partner ustwo, the digital design studio who just won a 2014 Apple Design Award for their gorgeous Escher-inspired app, Monument Valley.

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Did you miss Adobe’s big 2014 Create Now Tour? Would you like to see it now, online and on-demand?

The Create Now session we attended was packed – a large theater with standing-room only – and got terrific audience reviews and feedback… All together, over 100,000 people went to the tour around the globe.

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In late 2012, Adobe acquired Behance – the leading online community and social media plat­form for creative professionals, which is often referred to as “The LinkedIn for Creatives.” Since that time, Behance has grown like wildfire: it now has over 3 million members receiving over 150 million page 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 the creative community, and get inspired for future work. You can publish many types of media such as images, illustrations, video and audio, and follow statistics on how many views your projects are getting, and potentially make money. There’s even a job list for creatives and freelancers, with hundreds of employment opportunities.

A year ago today, Adobe announced it completed integration of Behance with the Creative Cloud, and it was making the premium-level Behance ProSite (which is normally US$99/year standalone) completely free for Creative Cloud subscribers.

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Moments ago, Adobe announced the new “Generator” feature available immediately and exclusively in an updated version of Photoshop CC – release 14.1.

Generator was first demoed as “PSD Lens” at the Sneak Peeks of the MAX Conference in May to great acclaim, and now because of Creative Cloud’s ability to release product upgrades quickly and as soon as they are ready, all Photoshop CC users (whether subscribing to the complete Cloud or just a single-app) will now receive the new version at no extra cost.

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Adobe’s first-ever ‘Creative Week’ kicked off today in the UK, with 18 hours of free program­ming available either live or on-demand anytime…

The latest trends, the hottest issues, the coolest technology! Join us for lively interactive debates, informative presentations, creative challenges, and exclusive demonstrations broadcast live online over 5 days from our London studio. We’ll be covering every aspect of the creative industry with the help of creative luminaries, industry experts, Adobe evangelists and many members of the creative community.

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