Which Mac versions of Photoshop Elements do NOT call home?

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
February 10, 2025
2 replies
231 views

In other words starting with what version of PSE was online activation required? PSE15 does, that I know so would be older.

If anyone knows the answer ALSO for PhotoShop PS not PSE feel free to reply as well. PS12/CS5 does so would be older.

Thanks!

Mac

S

SF_PhotoAuthor

Known Participant

I did find some answers.

PS10 does not, PS12 does, not sure about PS11

PSE 11 does not, PSE13 does, pretty sure PSE12 does not

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

From what i know of it even the very first version of Photoshop Elements 1,2 and 3 would "call home", but generally online activation started with Photoshop Elements 4, so any version up to Photoshop Elements 11 may or may not require activation at the time of install, while others would do a silent activation when starting Photoshop Elements with the internet connected.

Photoshop Elements 12 and newer do require activation at the time of install or within thirty days at the most, so there is no version of Photoshop Elements that i'm aware of for newer Macs that doesn't require online activation.

For Photoshop it's more cut and dry since online activation started on the Windows side for Photoshop CS (ps ver 8.0)

and on the Mac side with Photoshop CS2 (ps ver 9.0), although some of the earlier versions like PS 6 and 7 did "call home". I believe some of the early versions of Photoshop used for text work for languages other than English from WinSoft may not have had activation, but none of those will work on modern Macs.

Adobe itself also released some non activation versions for CS2 and CS3 when the activation servers were shutdown, however Adobe no longer offers those for download and they wouldn't work on modern Macs anyway, so i don't know of any non hacked Photoshop versions that don't require activation that will run on newer Macs.

Apple removed the ability for the running of 32 bit applications from macOS 10.15 Catalina onwards, so any version of Photoshop Elements before PSE 12 is 32 bit.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/103076

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

For Photoshop CS3 (ps ver 10), there is no way to activate it because Adobe shutdown the activation servers, so you would only get thirty days before it would come up with the needs to activated to continue using message.

Same goes for Photoshop CS (ps ver 8.0) on the Windows side and Photoshop CS2 (ps ver 9.0) on both Mac and Windows.

For PSE 10 and 11, even though they may not require activation/sign in at install like say PSE 2024, they will still silently activate when you start them and your internet is connection is on.

PSE 12 and newer definitely require sign in (activation) just like newer PSE versions like PSE 2024.

There are also many regional aspects to activation, so while a version PSE may require activation in one country, in another it may not. Also some versions differ depending whether you bought/downloaded it electronically as Adobe used to call it or bought a cd/dvd fro third party reseller.

Only Adobe knows all the variables when it comes to how or if any of their software needs activation or calls home.

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