Photoshop elements 12 will not open with Mac OS Catalina

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
August 14, 2020
3 replies
1405 views

I recently purchased a new Mac with Mac OS Catalina. Now photoshop elements 12 will not open. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue.

Thank you

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Jeff Arola

Community Expert

Unfortunately, no photoshop elements versions older than photoshop elements 2020 will work on macOS Catalina.

Apple made major changes to Catalina so no 32 bit applications will run on Catalina and even a lot of older 64 bit applications will not work as well.

A

AM with rogers.com

Participant

I understand that there are issues with older versions of Elements vs Apple's Catalina software.

What puzzles me is that I had originally installed 2019 vers of Elements and until last week, it worked perfectly.

The main page would open, and the organizer would open no problem as well, but the Editor would not.

So, reluctantly, I uninstalled Elements 2019 and tried to re-install. I could install it, but the process never asked me for the serial number. Hence, I hit a brick wall. While I know I can sell my 2019 to a Windows user, I just wanted to confirm that I have no hope on my iMac...even if I run the Adobe CC cleaner.

Thanks team.

John Waller

Community Expert

The only way to run older 64 bit versions of Elements on Catalina is to have them already installed on Mojave or earlier and then upgrade your operating system to Catalina. However, that may lead to unexpected behaviour when running unsupported or incompatible apps.

Older 64 bit versions of Elements include some 32 bit components in the installer and associated files which will not run on Catalina. There are no workarounds.

https://helpx.adobe.com/au/photoshop-elements/kb/elements-mac-64bit-compatibility.html#AreolderversionsofPhotoshopElementsandPremiereElementsversions2019orearliercompatiblewithmacOSCatalina

In short, there's no hope of successfully running any version other than Elements 2020 on Catalina.