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…

Time-lapse photography videos never go out of style…  Here is one of our all-time favorites from Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd – incredibly beautiful and perfect for the clear, dark nights of the season (watch full-screen):

Prior to the extensive video editing tools first introduced in CS6, Photoshop wasn’t normally known for its video capabilities – but in fact it’s always been possible to take a series of still photo­graphs (manipulated as desired) and then quickly create your own timelapse video using Photoshop Extended…

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Here’s the brand new edition of a very handy resource from James Wamser – a complete reference to all versions and features of Adobe Photoshop from CS1 to CC 2018… Similar to his InDesign handbook, it’s called the Adobe Photoshop New Features Guide: From CS to CC – and this 96-page ebook is available for free download now:

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Adobe has really been sweetening the pot lately for you to try out their massive Stock photo collection… These are high-quality, curated images, illustrations, vectors, graphics, templates, photos, and more from a vast collection of over 100 million assets to choose from. After acquiring Fotolia in 2015, Adobe rolled out a one-month-free offer which was nice, but it required paying for your first month up front (which would later be refunded if you canceled).

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Here’s a fantastic new resource that you should not miss – and even bookmark/share… It’s a complete introductory-level class on how to best use Photoshop from the excellent training team at Adobe KnowHow – a course worth hundreds of dollars, but now completely FREE with no catch. It includes 5½ hours of high-quality instruction broken out into 16 chapters with 58 video tutorials (in HD or SD), covering everything you need to know to really get going with Adobe Photoshop – the world’s leading graphics and photo editing application – at no cost!

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[UPDATE – Also see our new Summer CC 2018 Giveaway!]

Last month, Adobe shipped the all-new CC 2018 set of tools and services – a milestone marking the sixth 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 12 million paid subscribers.

Adobe CC 2018 is also known as the Creative Cloud 2018 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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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.

As always, all upgrades to your CC apps are included are part of your Creative Cloud membership at no additional cost. The CC 2018 software is available immediately for worldwide download via the Creative Cloud 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.

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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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Hard to believe, but Adobe recently surpassed over 12 million paid members for Creative Cloud. So we get this question all the time from readers, asking us, “What’s a good book to get started with Creative Cloud?” 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?

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 2018 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 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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The new version 2018 of Adobe’s “Elements” line is out, and no, you didn’t miss versions 16 and 17… Moving forward, the Elements applications will take on the upcoming year of their release instead of a version number. So this year, we have the transition from (the previous) version 15 to (the new) Photoshop Elements 2018 and Premiere Elements 2018.

And continuing our tradition of publishing the direct download links for major Adobe products such as Creative Cloud, Lightroom 6/CC, and Acrobat DC, below you’ll find the direct links from Adobe’s servers for the free trials and full offline installers for the new releases of Photoshop Elements 2018 and Premiere Elements 2018, for both Windows and macOS.

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