Photoshop CS2 - Free

[markmullen]

Adobe is giving away the CS2 suite for free;

Acrobat 3D 1.0
Acrobat Standard 7.0
Acrobat Pro 8.0
Audition 3.0
GoLive CS2
Illustrator CS2
InCopy CS2
InDesign CS2
Photoshop CS2
Photoshop Elements 4.0/5.0
Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0

Whilst not exactly state of the art you can't be cross at Yorkshire's Best Price.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/visit?m=5552&q=14371...

I've got CS6 but might get myself a full copy of Acrobat, might come in useful for something.

[poprock]

I was just trying to decide which forum to post this news in …

You’re quick today Mark!

Here’s a direct link to the download page on Adobe.com (you’ll need an Adobe ID to log in with, but those are free to sign up for):
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm...

[AndrewEH1]

Good man, I'll be having some of that when I get home!

[BlueMR2]

That was a quick download, getting over 12MB a sec at times.

[LongQ]

AndrewEH1 said:

Good man, I'll be having some of that when I get home!

If they've got the pages up and running again ..... unavailable at the moment.

[BlueMR2]

LongQ said:

AndrewEH1 said:

Good man, I'll be having some of that when I get home!

If they've got the pages up and running again ..... unavailable at the moment.

Just very busy.

Shame you can't use CS2 on the later versions of OSX as they removed rosetta.

[mini1380cc]

Are they still supporting cs2?

[LongQ]

mini1380cc said:

Are they still supporting cs2?

I would doubt it if they are giving it away for free.

Commercial suicide I would have thought.

In fact it could still be a commercial challenge. If "the masses" pick up on the offer and decide they wish to ignore the age of the product and demand "support" then things could yet get interesting.

Hopefully that will not happen ... but you never know.

[Shaw Tarse]

Thanks Mark, I saw you'd tweeted this earlier, but the website is borked (or at least it was) will try again later to see if it isn't overloaded.

[RobDickinson]

Great deal, all the fundamentals are there.

Remember you can use adobes dng converter if its acr doesnt support your camera.

[LongQ]

Much as one appreciates Marks' effort to advise everyone and the potential generosity of Adobe, personally I would be unlikely to touch any of it even with someone elses bargepole.

[flat-planedCrank]

LongQ said:

Much as one appreciates Marks' effort to advise everyone and the potential generosity of Adobe, personally I would be unlikely to touch any of it even with someone elses bargepole.

Interested to know why you wouldn't go anywhere near it...

[pernod]

Here's the update with the 'real' story:
Forbes Article

______________________________

On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated …

You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!

What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don’t require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available. (Special serial numbers are provided on the page for each product download.) See <http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1114930>.

[LongQ]

flat-planedCrank said:

LongQ said:

Much as one appreciates Marks' effort to advise everyone and the potential generosity of Adobe, personally I would be unlikely to touch any of it even with someone elses bargepole.

Interested to know why you wouldn't go anywhere near it...

Based on subsequent posts this may be a bit moot now but ...


Well, partly because it is older stuff and things have moved on and will continue to do so which means that there could be some compatibility issues involved soon if not already now.

And partly because some of the experiences around that time, even for things like the free and ubiquitous PDF reader, suggested that the application were not entirely problem free and well optimised.

One would hope that by the time a version has reached an end of life status what is available is relatively stable and error free but I have reservations about that hope, especially in the light of what recent OS "updates" may have introduced by way of changes and clearly there will be no official support available. A number of developers have been finding some challenges getting stuff to work (or work reliably) with new verions of iOS and Windows and some older applications are simply not happy and it seems never will be. I have no idea if CS2 and other Adobe products from around that time would sufer but one might assume they will at some point. Which means here is little point in adopting them unless seeking a challenge or two.

I may, of course, be wrong. But my experience of Adobe roduct in the past is that they tend to want to take over a machine as far as they can even to the point of forcing automatic updates when convenient to Adobe rather the the machine's owner. And that use a lot of disk space and a lot of resource when running.

On the basis of economy vs performance for non-multithreading software a couple of years ago I bought a pre-owned Dell machine. Upper end of the P4 range before the focus changed to multiprocessor devices. It has no Adobe software installed - not even the PDF reader. Seems to work well. I use it as my primary photo editing machine. Nothing else usually other than internet access when required.

I have the PDF reader on other devices if I need it. I do have a copy of Lightroom - version 1. However as I recall that was only installed on a machine that is now defunct. I always held the files externally so they are available elsewhere if I ever need to go back to the them. Obviously the edits will be gone but then that is unlikely to matter - things have moved on and I would probably re-edit anyway.

People may not think this to be a very rational decision but I have had enough negative experiences in times past (especially with PDF files that are not always to "standard" even when seemingly produced by Adobe software rather than a third party) that I don't see Adobe as a "go to" software provider for my purposes if they can be avoided.

Others may have a different opinion of course!

[RobDickinson]

Photoshop/adobe updated does do automatic updates but you can switch it off.

CS2's ACR had development cut years ago so wont support new raw formats, but they do have the free and ace DNG converter.