🎓 Lesson 2: The Free Trial, Your Account & Installing (Windows and Mac)

🔑 Your Adobe Account (Adobe ID)

Everything Adobe hangs off one free account, historically called an Adobe ID. Think of it as your key ring: the same email and password sign you in to the Adobe website, the Creative Cloud desktop app, the trial, and eventually any paid subscription. Creating the account is free and commits you to nothing — starting the trial is a separate step, and that's the one that starts a clock.

That distinction matters, so let's say it plainly: making an account ≠ starting the trial. You can create your Adobe account today, poke around the site, download the Creative Cloud app, and still not have used a single day of your 30. We'll use that gap on purpose.

If you already have an Adobe account from Photoshop, Acrobat, a free Adobe Express login, or an old Captivate from years back — great, use it. There's no need for a second one. You'll just sign in with what you already have.

🗓️ Where the Free Trial Lives — and the Timing Trick

The trial lives on Adobe's Captivate product page: adobe.com/products/captivate. Look for a Free Trial button near the top (Adobe also offers a Buy button right beside it — you want the trial). One trial download gives you a genuinely full-featured Captivate for 30 days, and — this is the good part — it includes both the all-new Adobe Captivate and Captivate Classic Win + Mac.

Now the single most useful piece of advice in this lesson. Don't start the trial yet. Part 1 of this course — Lessons 1 through 4 — is all concepts, decisions, and planning. You don't touch the software once. If you start your 30-day trial today, you'd burn a chunk of it just reading. Instead:

Here's the whole setup path at a glance. Notice the account and the trial are two different moments, with your planning time sitting neatly in between:

Figure 1 — The honest setup path: create the account now, plan through Part 1, and start the trial clock only when you begin building in Lesson 5.

💡 What if my trial expires mid-course? Life happens — you might pause for a few weeks. If your trial runs out before you finish, you have three honest options: subscribe (check Adobe's current pricing page), wait and see whether you're eligible for another trial in the future, or simply keep reading and do the planning-based activities on paper until you can build again. The lessons are written so the concepts land even when the software is closed.

💻 Installing on Windows or Mac

Here's a genuine Captivate advantage worth repeating: it runs natively on both Windows and macOS Win + Mac. If you're on a Mac, you install the Mac version and go — no virtual machine, no Boot Camp, no workarounds. (Captivate's main rival, Storyline, is Windows-only, so this is a real point in Captivate's favor for Mac-based teams.)

Installation goes through the Creative Cloud desktop app — a small manager app that downloads, updates, and launches your Adobe tools. The flow is the same shape on both platforms:

One reassurance: installing does not commit you to buying anything. You can install now and still hold off on starting the trial — though in practice, the moment you launch and sign in, the trial usually activates. So treat "launch Captivate for the first time" as the true start of your clock, and save that for Lesson 5.

✨ First Launch: Two Captivates, One Sign-In

When you open Captivate for the first time, three things happen: you sign in with your Adobe account, the trial activates, and you land in the all-new Adobe Captivate ready to start a project. Because your one account and one trial cover both tools, you'll also see Captivate Classic available separately — a distinct app you can launch when Part 4 rolls around. You are never choosing one instead of the other; you have both.

Figure 2 — All-new Captivate (a simplified mock-up, not a real screenshot): the welcome view after first launch, signed in on the trial, with Classic available separately.

Where your projects are saved

Captivate doesn't save your work in the cloud by default — your project is a file on your own computer. When you save in the all-new tool, you get a .cpt file All-New; in Classic, a .cptx file Classic. Pick a clear folder now (something like a "Captivate Projects" folder in your Documents) so you never hunt for your work. We'll talk backups and versioning properly in Lesson 21, but building one tidy home for your files today saves future-you a headache.

🎯 Try It: Get Install-Ready

📓 Learning Journal

📝 Lesson Summary

🎉 What You've Accomplished

You've turned "I should probably install this" into a clear, low-stress plan: an account that costs nothing, a machine you know is ready, and a deliberate date to start the trial so not a single day is wasted. That's exactly how a professional approaches a trial — intentionally. Nicely handled.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

🔭 Looking Ahead

In Lesson 3, you'll turn Lesson 1's two-tool overview into a reliable decision framework: exactly when to reach for the all-new Adobe Captivate and when Captivate Classic still earns its keep.

✅ Before the Next Lesson

• Confirm you can sign in to your Adobe account and the Creative Cloud app
• Write down your planned trial-start (Lesson-5) date and set a cancel reminder
• Have a "Captivate Projects" folder ready for later

📚 Additional Resources

• Course Glossary — every term in plain language
• Quick-Reference Cheat Sheet — including the honesty/badge map
• Adobe Captivate product page — the official free trial and current requirements