[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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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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[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.

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The new Creative Cloud (CC) is the most sophisticated and powerful toolset Adobe has ever released and recently readers have been asking for solid training materials to learn how to best use these applications…

A while back, we spread the word on over 30 hours of free video tutorials for CS6, and last year we published details on a fantastic new ebook for getting started learning the Adobe CC/CS6 Design Suite (202 pages).  But if you’re looking for a solid primer or helpful beginner’s lessons for Adobe Dreamweaver, that’s harder to find.

Fortunately there are two new books you can download that will teach you the essentials of Adobe Dreamweaver for free, thanks to the generosity of author Professor Thomas Payne… He writes:

“These tutorials are designed to get you through the basics of making web sites in Dreamweaver with the most flexibility and the least amount of work. Think of them as supplying you with a toolbox full of tools to start making good websites.

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Here’s an incredible new resource that you should not miss – and even bookmark/share… It’s a compre­hensive professional training course on how to best use Adobe Photoshop from O’Reilly’s InfiniteSkills – normally costing US$130, but now completely FREE with no catch. It includes 13 hours of high-quality instruction broken out into 23 chapters with 166 video tutorials (in HD or SD), covering all major aspects of Photoshop – the world’s most popular graphics and photo editing software – at no cost!

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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 all records with 7,000 attendees coming together in Los Angeles earlier this month, up from 5,000 just a couple years ago… And that was despite an increase 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. And this year, all attendees also received a free year of Adobe Stock as well as a new FUJIFILM X-T10 camera.

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With the continuing popularity of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography Plan where anybody can get both Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC for just 10 bucks a month, we’ve had some readers asking us the best ways to learn these two top imaging tools…

We always mention about the free video tutorials on Adobe TV, as well as the super­lative, compre­hensive courses offered on Lynda.com – but we can also recom­mend two new terrifi­cally helpful ebooks that you can work through step-by-step at your own pace. And fortu­nately, both books are completely free.

The first is the Adobe CC/CS6 Design Basics book that we’ve featured before on this site, which is 200+ pages taking you through the core essentials of Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, and InDesign CC.

The second book is Victoria Bampton’s excellent Lightroom Quick Start Guide, just out in a new 79-page edition which tells you every­thing you need to know to get going with Lightroom from the ground up.

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

The Adobe MAX 2014 conference was held earlier this month, and as in previous experiences, it’s always the three most intense days of the year…

It comes complete with major product announcements from the company, inspirational key­notes from creative wizards, scores of learn-till-you-drop training sessions, plentiful opportunities for networking with colleagues, checking out the latest cool technology on the pavilion floor, meeting the Adobe product teams in person, the great buzz over “Sneak Peek” demos of mind-blowing features under development, and of course the all-out MAX Bash party with 6,000 of your peers.

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