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Michael26888216s3wr
Participant
October 31, 2022
Question

Activate Photoshop CS2 on Vintage Mac G4

  • October 31, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 895 views

I am a longtime Photoshop user, and have legal copies of CS, CS2, CS3, CS4 and CS5, and now have an online subscription to the latest Photoshop. I am trying to reinstall my copy of CS2 on an older vintage Mac and failing. This post asks for help!

 

One of my hobbies is restoring, working with and blogging about vintage Macs. I recently restored a Power Mac G4 AGP Graphics and loaded it with Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther). My Photoshop CS2 is fully compatible with this environment and I loaded it, provided it with the registration number on my CD case and it works well... except for one problem. It tells me that I have 30 days to activate it or it will will no longer work. It refuses to activate of course, because those old activation servers are long gone. 

 

Is there a work around for this? I have a legally purchased copy of CS2, but it is going to "self-destruct" in 30 days unless I can provide it with an activation authorization code. Is there anyone here from Adobe that can help?

 

Alternately, I have read online that after the activation servers were taken down, Adobe provided a "no activation" version of CS2 to legal owners for some time. Unfortunately none of the download links I have found point anywhere valid anymore. Does anyone know if there is still a place from which this "no activation" version of CS2 can be downloaded?

 

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Jeff Arola
Community Expert
Jeff ArolaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2022

On the mac side photoshop cs (photoshop ver 😎 was the last version not to require

activation, so you could use that on your G4.

 

There are some updates for photoshop cs that you can get from here:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/mac/cs

 

Camera_Raw_2_4.dmg

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/cameraraw/mac

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
October 31, 2022

Actually, I seem to remember that CS and CS2 both needed activation, and the server for both was turned off at the same time. 

Jeff Arola
Community Expert
Jeff ArolaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2022

Photoshop cs (photoshop ver 😎 was the first version on the windows side to require activation, but adobe put off activation on the mac side till cs2.

LinSims
Community Expert
LinSimsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2022

You can't install it, I'm afraid. The activation servers for CS1-3 were turned off YEARS ago, and Adobe is no longer providing the "no activation" version. As far as I know, there is no where those can be downloaded from.

kglad
Community Expert
kgladCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2022

this is a bit of a technicality, but you can install (if you have a compatible os) and use it for 30 days.  beyond that you cannot use (on the same computer) because of the reason given by @LinSims .

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