Is CS4 compatible with OS 10.7(Lion)?

[Legauche]

Will I lose CS4 if I upgrade to OS 10.7 Lion?

I use CS4 in conjunction with LR3.

[Mike_Gondek]

You will not lose CS4 by upgrading to Lion. Since it is coming out this month, you may want to wait and watch the forums for a month incase any problems arrise.

Often .dot upgrades are not very risky but actually 10.6.5 to 10.6.7 have a tech ical problem with Adobe apps and keyboard modifiers that some people experience. We are hoping that 10.7 Lion will fix this as enough posts have been on these forums adn others about this.

So if you cannot risk any downtime, I would wait a month or 2. If you like to be on the cutting edge and are wiling to deal with the risk of a possible glitch or 2 then upgrade now.

[Legauche]

Thanks, Mike, great suggestion(s).  I appreciate your taking the time to address this.

I called Adobe support and the rep said he wasn't sure about whether CS4 was compatible.

I've been sticking with CS4 because I have numerous 3rd party apps (OnOne, etc) that won't

work with CS5 and hate to lose them or have to re-invest.

I'll wait, per your advice, and see what transpires.

This forum is terrific.

Best regards,

Frank DiMarco

[Mike_Gondek]

No problem. Forgot to mention one important issue earlier. If you are on a Mac with an older Power PC chip then don't upgrade to lion because Rosetta is going away. Read more here

[Legauche]

Yes, thanks Mike, good advice.  Fortunately I keep up to date on the OS and am using Intel Core-Duo Xenon in a Power Mac

[Guest]

Legauche wrote:

...Fortunately I keep up to date on the OS and am using Intel Core-Duo Xenon in a Power Mac

As we're all correcting each other because of Apple's schizophrenia...

"Power Macs" have PPC processors. "Mac Pros" have Intel processors.

[ashley_karyl]

I've just heard word that CS4 will not work with 10.7 but I am awaiting proper confirmation. The issue apparently seems to be with the installer and certain plugins rather than the app itself. This could be a case of CS4 working if already installed but not so if if it has to be reinstalled in future, which would suggest the installer itself includes some PPC coding. Office 2008 has this issue.

Message was edited by: ashley karyl

[Tai_Lao]

Mike Gondek2 wrote:

No problem. Forgot to mention one important issue earlier. If you are on a Mac with an older Power PC chip then don't upgrade to lion because Rosetta is going away…

That's a non sequitur.  CS4 does not require Rosetta at all. Photoshop 11.x ("CS4") is a Universal application that runs natively on Intel machines too.

____________

Wo Tai Lao Le

我太老了

[Nini_Tjader]

Mike, if you are on a PowerPC machine you won't even be able to upgrade to Lion.

[MJ S]

Just to clarify, PPCs have not been able to upgrade their OS since 10.5.8, so this is a non-issue for users with pre-Intel processors.

While CS4 is a Universal application, it has several Power PC files embedded in its structure (especially in Photoshop and Illustrator, related to scripting and conversions), so the possibility of conflicts during certain actions is likely to be inevitable.

[ashley_karyl]

I currently have a trial version of CS5 installed on a new Mac Pro and it all seems to work well enough with 10.6.8. I would be upgrading from CS4 that I was using on my old iMac and apart from the change to 64 bit processing I don't see an awful lot of reason to upgrade in terms of features I would need. If I go out now and pay for CS5 I am just wondering if we will once again see a situation in two years time where we are forced to change Photoshop version just to have something that works with the OS. There are parts about Lion that sound exciting but then again 10.6.8 is stable and perhaps that is more improtant.

[tellitmultimedia]

I have the new MacBook Pro with Lion pre-installed. I did a fresh install of CS4 and didn't have any problems with installation. I do fairly basic editing in Photoshop so I tested the following:

- Opening .jpg and .NEF (raw) files

- Opening several photos at once

- Editing a photo in the .NEF interface

- Creating new layers

- Flattening layers

- Adding text

- Rotating the image

- Cropping

- Changing saturation

- Applying unsharp mask

- Clone Stamp tool

- Applying the Liquify filter

- Selecting a color

- Using the eye dropper tool

- Paintbrush tool

- Burn tool

- Adjusting levels, curves, brightness, contrast

- Changing the image size

- Copying and pasting from one image to another

- Creating an Action

- Opening Adobe Bridge and performing a Batch operation using the Action I created

- Saving as .psd and .jpg

- Opening the files on another machine to see if the files seemed ok

I admit that this is not a thorough testing of the software, but I was able to accomplish these basic tasks on several photos I used. The only problem I experienced was when I tried dragging my Background layer onto the New Layer button. This caused the program to freeeze. When I pressed the New Layer button, it was fine. Considering this is about the only functions I ever use in Photoshop, I don't see a reason not to stick with this version. Obviously, I don't know if you would have problems doing more complicated things.

[Legauche]

Thanks for this great report!

Best regards,

Frank

[Guest]

Check this out: I upgraded to Lion. Mac loaded programs. CS4, including Acrobat Pro, no longer works. Error code 150:30, needing to re-enter product codes. Called Adobe technical and was told that CS4 is not compatible with Lion (as if Apple, the number one design computer and Adobe, the number one design software did not take this into account!). I was told (by tech in India) that cost to upgrade to 5.5 was $400. I called sales in Utah and was told it was $500. My CS4 is under two years old. I owned an advertising agency with hundreds of Macs filled with Adobe products and have never seen such pathetic product support. The new business model (see it on Wall Street) is to outdate products as fast as you can for as much as you can. Screw the customer. I asked sales how to get the 5.0 upgrade. They don't offer it. "Look on the Internet" I was told by sales. After 30 years of doing business with Adobe, I find that they are no longer interested in servicing and keeping clients. If anyone in this forum knows of a way to reactivate my fairly new CS4, please share. In the mean time, I'm working hard to find alternate software...not from Adobe.

[SG...]

Hi,

Do you have case numbers for those calls? Ps CS4 is compatible with 10.7, save a few caveats (loss of activation not being one that I've heard so far). The upsell is totally unwarranted and I'd like to have it checke out.

Does the error mention anything about PPC? Can you post a screen shot so I can search on the actual text? What CS4 product(s) do you have and which earlier version of 10.x did you upgrade from? Do you still have that older version present and working?

If it's an activation issue than I'd like to figure out if I can reproduce what's going wrong.

Thanks in advance,

steve

[Guest]

Thanks Steve. I'll pull info together tonight. Traveling today.

Ron Heath

Ask about Premier Advantage!

[Guest]

SG, thanks for your concern. The tech in India did not voice case number but I suspect that there was one to log the call. In fact, I went through an ordeal when I bought Snow Leopard. Both Apple and the Adobe sales rep in Utah assured me that CS4 would be compatible with Freehand. That was a 43 hour (logged time) phone issue. It started with Freehand being supported, ended in not being supported. That's another issue. I believe that there is a fairly simple activiation requirement based on my past experience. The OS version for the 27" iMac was 10.4 I believe. My frustration is that in the past, Adobe was very sensitive to small businesses being left in the lurch. Any suggestions, I'm open.

[SG...]

Hi Ron,

So your saying for your current problem you went from 10.4 to 10.6 then to 10.7? Can you also find the model identifier of the  27" iMac from System Profiler?

I also just noticed this doc which sounds like it might be what you're hitting.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/512/cpsid_51260.html

(ignore the Solution 9 part if the other steps don't help)

Let me know how things go.

regards,

steve

[Guest]

Steve:

I think that may be correct. The IMac 27 Model is A1312 which I believe had a 10.4 updated to 10.6. Apple tech assured me that the upgrade to Lion would work with my applications. I looked on the forums and it appeared that Adobe had worked with Apple for Lion. I printed the location you cite below, but was unable to find the folder Library/Preferences/FlexNet Publisher, and was reluctant to do something that might cause other issues.

Ron

[SG...]

Hi Ron,

Try the next solution(s). The pref. folder missing by itself isn't too concerning, but indicates that you licensing is not functioning typically. It looks like solution 2. provides steps to attempt repair on the licensing.

I'm a bit confused on the 27" iMac having 10.4 installed since that wouldn't be an Apple supported configuration. That 'might' explain the missing folder and broken licensing when migrating up to 10.7.

Activation schemes for various software providers have been broken by both minor and major OSX upgrades.

regards,

steve

[Guest]

You should find some help from this forum. The Adobe employees have

been a big help getting my PS in CS4 to work with Lion. Of course I

had already uninstalled Lion and gone back to Leopard, which allowed

me to change the pref. in PS to not start in Rosetta, which seems to

be the problem. Now I can reinstall Lion and I am hoping it works.

Maybe the same would work for you. I agree about the whole money thing

and the constant upgrading of programs. Current customers should be

given a break when upgrading. Period.

Pam

Pamela Prussel

pureandsimpledesign@yahoo.com

pamela@kidsguidemagazine.com

[Guest]

Thanks for reply. Please keep me posted!

Ron

Ask about Premier Advantage!

[Guest]

typicaladobe wrote:

...The new business model (see it on Wall Street) is to outdate products as fast as you can for as much as you can...

Just so we're clear...

You have subscribed to cutting edge technology and should not be surprised when you are cut by it and bleed a little. It is Apple that is tossing you for a loop. No one held a gun to your head to upgrade to Lion. If you were a Windows user, you could install any of the past decade's worth of Photoshop, including the most recent CS5, on Windows XP from a decade ago. There seems to be no reason to blame Adobe for your reckless choice in platform and software. But, of course, no one here is stopping you. Rant on. 

...and I think the milkman had that business model long before the advent of Wall Street.

[valwha]

I think you are being a little to kind to adobe here. I asked a simple question on the support line today. I asked if my Cs4  Dreamweaver would still work if I upgrade to Lion. I was told I would have to purchase Bronze Support in order to get a reply to this. I could not find the cost of Bronze support on the website, but did find out that I could have a single issue answered for 29 dollars!!!I  think that this could be said to be a touch greedy on the part of Adobe considering what I had to pay for Dreamweaver.So.....is ther anyone out there who can tell me if my Dreamweaver CS4 will work if I upgrade?

[Guest]

I'm not being kind to Adobe. I'm just recognizing reality. Look at the date on your CS4 software. It was released nearly 3 years ago. Snow Leopard 10.6 had not even been released. To think that Adobe could predict and be responsible for programming apps for OS X 10.7 3 years in advance is pure insanity.

If your issue is with DW, then you should be posting in the DW forum. Here's a link at no charge to you.