Is it possible to have two versions of Camera Raw installed at the same time?

[costasx73791396]

So here's my question; I like the older interface of Camera Raw, and I know that there's an option to downgrade to earlier versions, but the latest versions of Photoshop do not work with those earlier versions (specifically Photoshop versions 23 and later).

There's also an option to have two Photoshop versions installed, so I can have, say, version 22 alongside version 24. But it appears that whenever I install a Camera Raw or Photoshop upgrade it affects both versions of Photoshop.

Is there a way to install two versions of Photoshop, each one with a different version of Camera Raw?

Operating system is Windows.

[Zesty_wanderlust15A7]

If you ever manage this, please time how long it takes to open a certain photo in both.

Two years ago, it took about a second on my very old PC. Today, it's between 4 and 7 secs 😞  (going from Win 7 to 10 seemed a factor; the rest seems due to PS "updates").

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I would think you can certainly find which plugin file to set aside and replace again for ACR, but its other files seem to be common in just one folder and may become incompatible.

For me those are in ...
c:\Users\YOUR_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\

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Wish: Use GPU to open ACR in PS 😉

[D Fosse]

1.05 seconds 12 MP

1.3 seconds 36 MP

1.7 seconds 60 MP

Actually surprising that they all open almost equally fast.

You do have this, don't you?

[Zesty_wanderlust15A7]

Thx, and yeah, but I think that is for a raw file loading into ACR, not the ACR plugin loading. If it is, a faster GPU might solve it.

I've noticed that too, that file size doesn't matter so much, which may be indication that the GPU is used for loading it.

I actually have that option on Auto, cos when I set it like you, the one above greys out as if it is not used, which confuses me. So I thought I'd rather have smooth operation in ACR than a raw loading fast. I'm gonna try it again; I think I've played with it a few weeks ago to see if there was a difference (I thought not).

My PC is 16 or 17 years old. A  i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz + 32 GB RAM + GTX 1050 Ti

It does a lot of things fast enough as my most used file size is 12–16MB or much smaller.

I think going to Win 10 and PS versions of the last year or two brought it down, and too many extensions possibly. If I try the beta, it is "snappier" but ACR doesn't load faster.

Thankfully, ACR is much faster if you can use it in an action.

I have to look out for a new PC anyway, but the slow loading ACR is the main problem, or the layer style dialog taking a second, actions becoming slower, ...

For being that old, it's actually quite amazing. Accelerating ACR itself w GPU makes it very smooth here too.

[Zesty_wanderlust15A7]

Tested it again with your setting and it remains the same.

I first loaded a 12.5 MB raw into PS beta.

Opening ACR plugin then takes 7–8 secs too.

Another reason is probably the ACR plugin becoming larger and more complicated in its new version. I suspect starting Lightroom would be faster...

[Jeff Arola]

What you need to do is take the latest 15.3.1 camera raw plugin out of

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-Ins\CC

and put one copy in

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2023\Plug-ins

and one copy in

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge 2023\Plug-Ins

Now take the older, for example, camera raw 12.2.1 and put one copy in

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2021\Plug-ins

and one copy in

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge 2021\Plug-Ins

Looks like you need Photoshop 2021/Bridge 2021 or older to use an older camera raw interface plugin like 12.2.1.

I did test this using Photoshop 2023 (24.5)/Bridge 2023 with camera raw 15.3.1

and Photoshop 2021 (22.5.9)/Bridge 2021 with camera raw 12.2.1

on a Windows 10 x64 system.