New to Photoshop .. which should I choose? Have multiple computers

[Keith5E9A]

I desire to be able to manipulate my digital photos on several home computers and would like to use Adobe Photoshop or Elements as it appears they both carefully secure original photos' integrity and are most likely complete and streamlined like other Adobe software. My original thrust is keeping separate copies at lower resolution while maintaining originals both on hard drive and cloud. Was thinking get a new Elements every year while learning Ps CS3 with the Shelly/Cashman textbook. Will use on 6 home computers with Office 2013,365 and Win 10. All Core 2+ processors. Am not sure these are best picks for a frugal novice but I like my Adobe PDF software and would like to coordinate my photo endeavors. Any helpful input would be appreciated. Thanks Keith. 

[LinSims]

Let me move this to the Photoshop forum for you, which is the appropriate forum for your question.

The Using the Community forum is for help in using the Adobe Support Community forums, not for help with specific programs. Product questions should be posted in the associated product community.

As a sidenote, the activation servers for all Creative Suites programs from CS1 through CS3 are offline. You cannot activate any of those programs anymore. If you don't already have Photoshop CS3 on those computers, you will not be able to get it working now.

Furthermore, while you can install CC programs on as many computers at a time as you like, subscriptions can be active (as in, you're logged into Adobe) on only 2 computers at a time, and the programs can only be in use on 1 computer at a time. 

[Keith5E9A]

Not sure what CC is ... is that the latest version of CS3? I have a QUE "textbook" entitled Photoshop CC on Demand copywright 2013. Is this the entire Photoshop or an abbreviated version? Was looking for a possible "course" I might possibly get college credit for similar to the Pasewark and Pasewark Microsoft Office series.

I only need to use 1 computer at a time but would like to have same software on each of my computers. Wanted to have a computer present in my basement, garage, and study as well as a laptop for work and one for my hobby endeavors. I consider this program a base program along with Office and Norton among others for each computer.  It appears I would have to buy 3 sets of software for my 6 computers. Is this correct?

Not sure how to access Photoshop forum to check responses to post you moved ??

[LinSims]

Creative Cloud (CC) replaced Creative Suites (CS) a few years ago.

You are in the Photoshop forum now. 🙂 If you land on the front page (https://community.adobe.com/), you have to scroll to find the Photoshop forum. So far, only you and I have responded to your post. 😞

Photoshop has changed a LOT since 2013. The book you have may be able to give you the basics, but if the interface has changed it'll probably confuse you more than help you. I'm not a real Photoshop user, though, so I hope someone else can provide you with that information.

There are a lot of video tutorials available through Adobe, however, and even more available through YouTube or services like LinkedIn Learning (if you have a premium account).

As to your question about licenses, the answer is that you can INSTALL the program on as many computers as you like. However, you can only be LOGGED IN on TWO of them at any one time, and you can only be actively using the program on ONE machine at a time. So if you're logged in on your work laptop and your hobby laptop, you will have to log OUT of one of them if you want to use it in the garage, and you would then have to log IN to the CC on the garage computer. 

Lastly, while you may be able to install the CS3 version of Photoshop, you will never be able to get it working. The activation servers were shut down a bit over a year ago because Adobe couldn't keep them running anymore. If you can't activate it, you can't use it. 

Depending on your use case, you might be better off buying Photoshop Elements as a one-time purchase for, I think, about $99. Adobe has pages comparing the features of Photoshop vs Photoshop Elements you can use to figure that out.