Using CS6 from an external drive

[Paolo T]

Hi,

I'm trying to switch from High Sierra to Mojave, and would like to see how the CS6 applications work. I've therefore installed Mojave on an external SSD, and tried to run the CS6 apps from the internal drive.

Unfortunately, all CS6 apps tell me that I have to reinstall them. Just reinstalling the Java SE 6 Machine is not enough. But I can't at the moment reinstall from the original DVDs, since they can't be read, and the download links for the installers no longer work.

Is there a way to run the apps from an external drive? The alternative would be to go on installing Mojave on the internal drive, and if it doesn't work delete everything and reinstall the latest backup. Time consuming, and dangerous.

Paolo

[Test Screen Name]

No the apps have to be installed. And separately activated (uses up a license). Don’t expect it to work fully in Mojave. And you will need your disks to revert. Continued use of CS6 for you is pretty fragile, I urge you not to try and upgrade anything. Freeze this computer. Take it off the internet too, for safety. 

[Paolo T]

Probably, that's it. Keep the current, old Mac with High Sierra for the CS6 apps only, until I can finally get rid of them. This should not be necessary for more than a couple years, since at the moment I only need InDesign and Acrobat Pro from the suite, having migrated all the rest of my workflow to other apps.

The "CS6" Mac can be a headless machine, accessed via Remote Desktop. Not the most elegant configuration, but it should be trasparent enough. All considered, the CS6 machine will be just another window on the more modern Mac desktop.

(After Adobe killed FrameMaker for Mac, I had to do more or less the same, with a virtual machine running in a separate window…).

Paolo

[Paolo T]

An update, for whomever had to do my same test. You can copy the Adobe folders inside the /Library and ~/Library Application Support folders, from the source High Sierra drive to the target Mojave one. I think this works also with different systems.

When booting in Mojave, all CS6 applications can start, even if they give an error message concerning damaged installation. Java SE 6 is obviously needed.

It seems that the apps are working fine, as they are in High Sierra, but no extensive test has been conducted. Also, the Mojave test systems is "clean", so there are less variables coming into play. But they do work.

Since I'm here: on a 4k display, with a scaled mode, Mojave is not all that bad, once you have the font smoothing activated in the System Preferences, and reactivate the font smoothing option from the Terminal, via the following command:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

Most of the times, there is a convincing greyscale smoothing. In some apps, the old color fringing is still there!

Paolo

[Paolo T]

An addition to the above: you also have to copy the Adobe Application Manager folder in the Applications > Utility folder. This is needed.

Paolo