Photoshop CS3 and Snow Leopard. Yea or nea?

One of the dark spots hanging over the excitement over Snow Leopard is whether or not Photoshop CS3 will work.

Adobe caused some real consternation when they announced earlier this week that CS3 would get no support (along with the rest of the older Creative Suite) and suggested people upgrade to CS4.

In an Adobe FAQ [PDF download link] it's stated: "Older versions of Adobe creative software were not included in our testing efforts. While older Adobe and Macromedia applications may install and run on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6), they were designed, tested,and released to the public several years before this new operating system became available. You may therefore experience a variety of installation, stability, and reliability issues for which there is no resolution."

Then there was some backtracking from John Nack, Adobe Photoshop product manager. "It turns out that the Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard, and to the best of our knowledge, PS CS3 works fine on Snow Leopard."

Hmmm. So will it work? People have invested a fortune in Adobe products. Some users who have used CS3 says it runs OK with late beta releases of Snow Leopard, but others have said there are a lot of problems. I've heard both stories from people using it, and remember, Adobe isn't saying CS4 is perfect either.

If I were making my living with Photoshop or other parts of the Creative Suite and was running CS3, I think I'd wait until there are a lot of user reports. Yes, CS3 has been out for a long time, and yes, Adobe would love to have us update to CS4, but in my case there are some critical plug-ins I use that haven't yet been updated to work with CS4, and I'm probably not alone.

Here's a link to John Nack's blog where some customers are commenting none too happily about Adobe right now.

I expect this issue is going to get a lot of attention when people start upgrading to Snow Leopard. Stand by.

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Source: http://www.adobe.com/

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Analysis / Opinion Software Graphic Design Snow Leopard

One of the dark spots hanging over the excitement over Snow Leopard is whether or not Photoshop CS3 will work. Adobe caused some real...

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emil

So has anyone upgraded and tried running CS3? What's happening, people? How bad is it?

August 28 2009 at 1:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Karen

Yes, but still no answer about Photoshop Elements 6, the current version. Adobe could save themselves a lot of grief if they would just let us know if it works or not.

August 27 2009 at 9:17 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Howe

We are in contact with David Pogue to better understand what he ran into and with what build of Snow Leopard. Once I have updated info I'll post it to Twitter (@dhowe).

August 27 2009 at 6:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

brian

Good news for me, because I've been using Photoshop since 1995 (version 2.5, back when the rectangular and circle marquee were two separate tools, and before layers existed) and I hate the UI of CS4 with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns--but the more I read about 10.6 the more antsy I get waiting for my copy to arrive. CS3 forever! :-)

August 27 2009 at 4:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

david

Who ever started this rumor should be flogged, I really see no reason why it wouldn't work.

August 27 2009 at 4:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tom Waterhouse

I'm sure it'll be fine - but regardless, all of the whinging people are doing won't do any good.

I'm pretty certain Adobe won't backtrack and magically make some time for themselves to do some proper testing and bug fixes.

That, and upgrade prices are fairly reasonable.

August 27 2009 at 4:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

spyker

When I pay a lot of money for some software I expect it to work with future OS updates. I don't think that just because Adobe has moved on to CS4 that they can drop support for CS3, not everyone can afford to upgrade to the latest versions. I'm really disappointed with this, I hope I don't experience many issues...

August 27 2009 at 3:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to spyker's comment

artifex

If Snow Leopard were just a mandatory service pack for 10.5, I'd agree that Adobe should patch CS3 if needed, since they claimed 10.5 support. But it's not. It's a whole new release of the OS, with a lot of different frameworks.

August 28 2009 at 5:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Aymeric

since we are on the subject, does adobe golive 9.0 work with SL? I am still using it in tiger and have not converted to DW. Adobe says it works with Leopard, but no words yet for SL
thanks

August 27 2009 at 2:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Aymeric's comment

dTondro

I think the bigger problem you might have is if your processor isn't an Intel chip then you can't upgrade to Snow Leopard anyhow... Snow Leopard ended support for the older IBM chips.

August 28 2009 at 10:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

emil

David Pogue reported problems with PS CS3 as well. This might be a deal-breaker for me, unfortunately ... or perhaps a reason to obtain CS4 through illegitimate means until CS5 comes out in October, at which point I'll be less unhappy at the thought of paying Adobe for a newer version of their software just so it can run well.

August 27 2009 at 2:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Andre

Nice of them to save this controversy until 2 days before release.

Just what do they do with all the money we give them?

August 27 2009 at 1:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply