Adobe

My long time use of Photoshop, from 5.0, 5.5, 7, CS, & CS3, seems to have been made non-functional by Adobe.

So, I am distrustful of any Adobe products. Is there an alternative to Photoshop?

<p>Non functional in what way? <br>

Check out Affinity Photo. </p>

<p>Paint Shop Pro used to come pretty close to Photoshop. I use the stand alone Lightroom for all my post processing.</p>

<p>How is it non-functional? I'm still using CS3 with no issues.</p>

<p>Alternatives (depending on specific functions you need and learning curve you're willing to put up with) are Paint Shop Pro and GIMP.</p>

<p>Is the problem with Photoshop itself, or with Adobe and its shift to the Cloud? Last October, I was able to buy a DVD copy of CS6 from Adobe by dealing with the Adobe elves on the phone, almost no whining required. Of course, it's been seven months since then, but it might be worth a shot...</p>

<p>Not quite on topic, but... here in the UK adobe are currently offering a promotion on their CC photo bundle - about £83 pa (usually over £100). Finally weakened & signed up.</p>

 

<p>I still use CS2 and PS7 and have had no issues with "Adobe making features non functional" What problem are you having? What OS?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Both my laptop & desktop suddenly had no CS3 on them. Unfortunately, I left the disc in Florida when I returned to Phila after the winter so I couldn't try to reinstall. So I went for my Photoshop CS. Now the program says that I need to put in the activation code. When I put it in it says "incorrect" - but it is correct and the Adobe website shows that it is registered with that exact code. Calling Adobe gets me nowhere. They just say that these older programs are no longer supported. Now I'm using my Photoshop 7. When will it fail? I'm waiting - it probably won't be long until Adobe figures out that someone still has a functioning copy. I'm beginning to believe that aliens did arrive at area 51 in Roswell, NM.</p>

 

<p>If you have the activation code for CS3, it shouldn't be a problem. You should be able to find a copy, even if it's someone else's disk and then you can use your code. Plenty of people are running very old versions of PS.</p>

<p>You don't need the CS3 disc. If you want to download the CS3 installer files, you can still get them directly from Adobe here:<br>

<a href="http://www.adobe.com/downloads/other-downloads.html">

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/other-downloads.html</a></p>

 

<p>As Jeff and others have said, plenty of people are still running old versions of Photoshop without any problem, Photoshop 7 included. Adobe is not surreptitiously disabling/removing old versions of Photoshop on people's computers. If you can no longer run CS3, the cause is elsewhere. I'd look at maybe the possibility that your "helpful" antivirus software has detected and disabled this no-longer-supported software.</p>

<p>If you have a CS2 license, Adobe released an update when they shut down the license servers a couple of years ago.<br>

You can get the latest version: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?loc=en&e=cs2_downloads</p>

<p>My version of CS2 on Windows 7 started playing up after a Microsoft update last month. ( see http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00du4Z) I tried all sorts of remedies but none worked.<br /> I have since moved Windows 10 (very reluctantly) and have been pleasantly surprised that Photoshop CS2 transferred seamlessly including all my preferences and presets, and now works as well as it did before.<br /> As Geoff says, Adobe made CS2 available (including the key), to all those with valid previous versions of Photoshop. It's worth a try.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Both my laptop & desktop suddenly had no CS3 on them.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The only way I can see that happening is IF you used the Adobe uninstaller's. There is nothing Adobe does to do this automatically. </p>

<p>Thanks Andrew, I was about to say this. Adobe does NOT uninstall s/w on your machine without your permission or notification.<br>

What did YOU do to cause it? <br>

I can understand having trouble with the s/w after an OS update, but something you did, or that another s/w app did removed the s/w, not Adobe.</p>

 

<p>Adobe doesn't necessarily obsolete the apps when the PC or Mac's OS is updated or upgraded, they just stop updating them. It's their business model because it doesn't pay to introduce new versions if you keep updating old ones, and with Adobe CC, they've effectively dropped all updates to non-CC versions, except a few such as Acrobat Pro, for updates but many still work, even with newer OS's. I'm still running several CS 5/5.5/6 apps.</p>

<p>On another note, Adobe does uninstall older CC versions with the installation of new ones, and not just with replacing current ones but adding new ones.This happened with several CC 2015 apps replaced with new CC (2016) versions.They do this to ensure CC users only run the current version. This is why you don't let Adobe CC automatically update apps, let them tell you an update is available so you can see if the previous version(s) are removed or not. Some newer versions don't run only older Mac hardware where recent and previous versions did.</p>