Photoshop CS on CD

[cliveh]

Does anyone know where I can buy or borrow a Photoshop CS on CD for windows, with serial number to activate it's full editing software? I don't need the latest version and CS would do.

 

[neeksgeek]

Various older versions of Photoshop turn up on eBay all the time, for not-unrealistic prices. But for similar money you might buy a modern alternative to Photoshop. (Yes, I’m plugging Affinity Photo again.)

 

[Tom Kershaw]

At one point in time Adobe had the CS2 suite available to download, free of charge.

 

[Pieter12]

At one point in time Adobe had the CS2 suite available to download, free of charge.

I don't think there are any CS downloads available from Adobe any more. Plus, you'd still need the serial number. Borrowing someone's copy of CS with the number might or might not work depending on the number of machines it is already installed on. Early versions would only allow a single or just a few computers to run the program at a time, sometimes necessitating deauthorization of one to activate/authorize another on the same network. I don't know if the later versions communicate with Adobe for similar purposes. All the folks who pirated Photoshop in the early days lead Adobe to draconian protection measures and ultimately to the pure subscription model.

 

[cliveh]

Thanks guys, but I have Photoshop elements on my computer and although occasionally useful, I would like something more like CS. I am quite happy with older versions, as most of the upgrades are produced for financial gain without doing things with much difference. As Pieter mentions CS2 is no longer available as a free download. Affinity Photo is a good price, but suspect it is about the same level as Elements. Also, I know how to work the earlier versions of Photoshop.

 

[Oren Grad]

Adobe shut down the license validation servers for all of the CS versions some time ago. I don't know whether it's possible to get a license validated some other way - you'd have to ask Adobe. Probably worth doing before you spend money on a CS version.

I have Affinity Photo. It's quite a bit more powerful than Photoshop Elements. But it has a very different user interface, file handling etc - you might like it, you might not. They offer a free trial, though you'd probably need to invest a substantial amount of time to fully grasp the new way of doing things and decide whether you're comfortable with it.

 

[gone]

If you can use PS7 (which does way, way more than I need), I actually found a free download some time ago by googling "free Photoshop 7 download with serial number". You just don't register it at the time of install. Works great. The idea of paying a monthly charge for software is crazy. I would never do that, just because.

 

[Pieter12]

Depending on what you're doing, Capture One is very good for what it does.

 

[cliveh]

The problem with some of these downloads is you never know if it is a Trogon horse infiltrating your system. A physical CD somehow feels a safer option, which is why I would never use cloud storage.

 

[shutterfinger]

I'm using CS5 on Windows 10. I bought it off ebay several years ago. It is a upgrade disk and requires CS2, 3, or 4 to install/use it. The seller included a CS2 disk with serial number and I have a purchased when new CS2.
CS2 would not run on later versions of windows, somewhere around Win7 or Win 8. It has a lot of crashes. I have the Adobe download CS2 also, no serial number.
If you're running a later version of Windows look for CS4 or CS5.
CS5 does not scale to this high resolution screen (3840x2160) and I have to set the display to a lower resolution (1920x1080) to be able to read the menus.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

The problem with some of these downloads is you never know if it is a Trogon horse infiltrating your system. A physical CD somehow feels a safer option, which is why I would never use cloud storage.

PhotoLine does everything I need at the moment, for a very reasonable price. www.pl32.com

 

[grat]

I second the Affinity photo suggestion. It's a little funky compared with Photoshop in a few ways, but I find it significantly more powerful than the last version of Photoshop I had a serial # for. Its support for photo-stitching and stacking is quite good.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Thanks guys, but I have Photoshop elements on my computer and although occasionally useful, I would like something more like CS. I am quite happy with older versions, as most of the upgrades are produced for financial gain without doing things with much difference. As Pieter mentions CS2 is no longer available as a free download. Affinity Photo is a good price, but suspect it is about the same level as Elements. Also, I know how to work the earlier versions of Photoshop.

I tried Affinity Photo, and after using PS for a long time, it was a bit of a let-down. To me the Adobe PS subscription is the best deal and always up-to-date.

 

[RDW]

Does anyone know where I can buy or borrow a Photoshop CS on CD for windows, with serial number to activate it's full editing software? I don't need the latest version and CS would do.

All versions of CS for Windows require online activation. You can't install from the CDs without this. Unfortunately, Adobe do not support activation for versions earlier than CS5 (but see below). At some point in the not too distant future, they will also presumably switch off the servers for CS5 and CS6, making it impossible to install them without some hack.

Adobe used to provide a version of CS2 on an open website, complete with special licence keys, that does not require online activation, intended for purchasers of this version who could no longer activate in the normal way when the servers had been switched off. This site has now been deleted, though you can still find a mirror on the Wayback Machine at archive.org. Whether it will work on a current version of Windows is another question. The last time I tried it, there were problems, though I didn't really pursue it.

When the CS3 servers were switched off, Adobe provided activation-free installers in a more complicated way, requiring purchasers to input their original licence keys and receive new keys and installers in return. Unfortunately this site has also been deleted. If you can get hold of these special installers and keys (the ones on the original CDs won't work) it is still possible to install and run CS3 on recent versions of Windows 10. Someone who is selling the CDs might perhaps have saved and kept the new keys and installers, though they weren't widely advertised.

I've read contradictory things about CS4 activation. One Adobe page claimed it could no longer be activated. Some forum posts on the Adobe support site claimed it could still be activated, but old installations couldn't be deactivated to reset your installation count, so activation might not be possible. Adobe has not provided an activation-free alternative. Presumably they won't for CS5 or 6 either.

Photoshop 7, the version before the original CS, will still install and run on Windows 10 with some limitations. The installation and swap file need to be on a partition smaller than 1TB, and it can only save files to such a partition. It does not require online activation. PS7 was never made free to download, so any versions you see online are pirated.

Affinity Photo is the best Photoshop alternative I've seen. It has a perpetual licence, and the version you buy from the Affinity website doesn't require online activation.

 

[removed account4]

Affinity Photo is the best Photoshop alternative I've seen. It has a perpetual licence, and the version you buy from the Affinity website doesn't require online activation.

as long as the user has no need for customer service affinity seems like it works ok. if you have a customer service issue be prepared to use either a crowd-sourced knowledge base which may or may not help your situation or call and speak with customer service and get verbally abused over the phone. when I called for help before I sunk my teeth into a PS subscription, I had trouble and it makes one wonder how the head of customer service even had a job like that seeing he's rude and obnoxious to his customers. life's too short to deal with jerks.

good luck Clive!
John

 

[Tom Kershaw]

if you have a customer service issue be prepared to use either a crowd-sourced knowledge base which may or may not help your situation

I've experienced good customer service from the PhotoLine developers via e-mail.

 

[RDW]

as long as the user has no need for customer service affinity seems like it works ok. if you have a customer service issue be prepared to use either a crowd-sourced knowledge base which may or may not help your situation or call and speak with customer service and get verbally abused over the phone. when I called for help before I sunk my teeth into a PS subscription, I had trouble and it makes one wonder how the head of customer service even had a job like that seeing he's rude and obnoxious to his customers. life's too short to deal with jerks.

For the record, I did once contact Affinity customer service and they were perfectly polite.

Adobe's customer service for CS now amounts to 'rent CC or go away', and they also direct customers to a crowdsourced forum. Most of the online support material for CS has been deleted, and they won't help you install any of the versions for which they've discontinued activation. So customers who spent $2500 on earlier versions of the Master Collection now have a worthless box of coasters. Ironic that a mechanism supposedly designed to prevent 'software theft' is now being used to deprive paying customers of the product they paid for. Affinity will never be able to do this, at least with the current version, because installation does not depend on online activation.

 

[removed account4]

For the record, I did once contact Affinity customer service and they were perfectly polite.

person I dealt with was vulgar swore at me, called me a liar and said I was trying to steal the 10 day free trial (amongst other things I won't type here .. how does someone steal something that's free ?? )
im glad you had a good experience. ... but I'll never give them or anyone like them any of my $ or promote their products.
PS might be expensive or bloated or charge like less than a cup of coffee a day to have a subscription to their services (even if you buy the beans and make coffee yourself), but it works and when it doesn't and you call CS you aren't treated badly. maybe their fired their customer service chief, if I was a secret shopper he'd have been fired.

Adobe's customer service for CS now amounts to 'rent CC or go away', and they also direct customers to a crowdsourced forum. Most of the online support material for CS has been deleted, and they won't help you install any of the versions for which they've discontinued activation. So customers who spent $2500 on earlier versions of the Master Collection now have a worthless box of coasters. Ironic that a mechanism supposedly designed to prevent 'software theft' is now being used to deprive paying customers of the product they paid for. Affinity will never be able to do this, at least with the current version, because installation does not depend on online activation.

my grandmother lived in a house that she and my grandfather built in the Great Depression. it had a boiler that was coal converted to oil and eventually converted to gas. I remember she had trouble in the 90s and I was living nearby and met the guy from the gas company who was there to repair it, he was like 80 years old and said when he died or retired there would be no one left at the gas company that would be able to help service her boiler.

 

[RDW]

my grandmother lived in a house that she and my grandfather built in the Great Depression. it had a boiler that was coal converted to oil and eventually converted to gas. I remember she had trouble in the 90s and I was living nearby and met the guy from the gas company who was there to repair it, he was like 80 years old and said when he died or retired there would be no one left at the gas company that would be able to help service her boiler.

I'm sure I'd be deeply annoyed by any company whose customer service representatives treated me badly (like a certain cellphone service provider I could mention). But to me the way Adobe operates amounts to a sort of corporate abuse. Customers may not be shouted at by their help team, but if they want to do something like activate that old copy of CS they are stonewalled and often directed to a community forum that has no power to help (where an ACP will generally scold the hapless user for not upgrading to CC years ago, and tell them they should be grateful Adobe allowed them to use the old package for so long).

A company that locks its customers out of expensive software they might have bought just over a decade ago (with the only alternative a rental scheme they have to keep paying for indefinitely) just isn't a company I want to give any more money to, even if CC were half the price it is (I do grind my own coffee beans at home, but don't mind paying for espresso when I'm out). I wouldn't expect them to provide active support for one of their retired products, any more than I'd expect the gas company to service that old boiler, but Adobe have put a padlock on it and now refuse to hand out keys (though the cost to do so would be trivial). I don't have to trust Affinity to be nice, because an activation-free product puts the power in my hands, as far as anything that isn't Open Source can.

 

[removed account4]

so a software company should allow people to use their 10 or 20 year old products indefinitely ?
my Motorola flip phone stopped working 20 years ago should I be upset ? the local TV stations no longer
broadcast so I can get reception without a "digital antenna" should I be upset ?

 

[RDW]

so a software company should allow people to use their 10 or 20 year old products indefinitely ?

Yes.
Why should they be allowed to stop you? A licence marketed as 'perpetual' shouldn't mean '11 years', for a product that cost up to $2500, just because Adobe says so. And I suspect if this were tested in court in a country with strong consumer laws, the small print in the licence that they presumably claim allows them to do this wouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny. Photoshop is still an application under active development. Adobe is a £275 billion dollar company with enormous resources. They already had mechanisms in place to provide the activation-free installers for CS2 & 3, but chose to kill them off for no good reason (apart from making even more money in rentals).

my Motorola flip phone stopped working 20 years ago should I be upset ? the local TV stations no longer
broadcast so I can get reception without a "digital antenna" should I be upset ?

No.
That would be asking for active support in a changing environment that's outside their control, like rewriting CS2 to work properly under Windows 10, which of course I wouldn't expect them to do.

 

[Pieter12]

but chose to kill them off for no good reason (apart from making even more money in rentals).

Rampant piracy. Adobe would not have been able to continue without killing or at least reducing it. The majority of Adobe product users are professionals who use the software as part of their business and should be expected to pay for it. Their products are powerful and really beyond the scope and abilities of casual users.

 

[removed account4]

Yes.
Why should they be allowed to stop you? A licence marketed as 'perpetual' shouldn't mean '11 years', for a product that cost up to $2500, just because Adobe says so. And I suspect if this were tested in court in a country with strong consumer laws, the small print in the licence that they presumably claim allows them to do this wouldn't stand up to legal scrutiny. Photoshop is still an application under active development. Adobe is a £275 billion dollar company with enormous resources. They already had mechanisms in place to provide the activation-free installers for CS2 & 3, but chose to kill them off for no good reason (apart from making even more money in rentals).

No.
That would be asking for active support in a changing environment that's outside their control, like rewriting CS2 to work properly under Windows 10, which of course I wouldn't expect them to do.

you won't expect them to rewrite software to work for an obsolete operating system but you expect them to maintain a suite of software for obsolete operating systems and train people for the 1:500K people just in case .. just because people
( maybe people like you ? ) don't want to subscribe for the current software?

judging from your complaints its obvious you aren't adobe's target audience . ... like someone who expects
customer service and help without slander and insults from customer service isn't the target audience for affinity ... LOL
..
im glad you had the opportunity to move on to affinity I hope it works well for you.

 

[RDW]

Rampant piracy. Adobe would not have been able to continue without killing or at least reducing it. The majority of Adobe product users are professionals who use the software as part of their business and should be expected to pay for it. Their products are powerful and really beyond the scope and abilities of casual users.

I meant killing off the activation-free versions for those who had already paid. Killing off CS in general is another issue. Piracy was of course one excuse for that, but doesn't really make sense as the main reason for Adobe making the switch to CC. CS already had an anti-piracy system, the online activation we've been discussing in this thread. Some pirates found hacks to circumvent it, but they've also managed to circumvent the system in various versions of CC, so piracy didn't end with CS.

The real reason for the switch for CC is pretty obvious - a large, endless revenue stream for Adobe. It would no longer be possible to skip a version because you didn't care about any of the new features - you'd get the upgrade and pay for it, like it or not. But if Adobe can offer that, and people are prepared to pay for it, good luck to them. My problem isn't the subscription system in general, it's having a perfectly good copy that you've paid for taken away from you at the whim of Adobe.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

No CD required.

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.html