Adobe stops giving ****s, now giving away Photoshop/CS2 for free

[AGX-17]

I assume this is the right section for this, so...

 

http://gizmodo.com/5...free-right-here

 

Adobe's giving us all a late Christmas present. You can grab yourself a free, legitimate copy of Photoshop and the rest of the Creative Suite 2, right now, direct from Adobe. No catch.

Well, unless you think having an Adobe account is a catch. Anyway, apparently Adobe's tired of keeping the activation servers running to support legitimate installs of the 10-year-old CS2, so it's decided to just give it away. Sounds great to me.

Handy if all you need is a quick image editor, Photoshop CS2 will still do all the basic things, just not the new fancy smart ‘content aware‘ stuff. Free's free, so get over to Adobe.com and get downloading. [Adobe via Twitter]

Update:The install for Mac is actually for Power PC devices, so you'll need Mac OS X v.10.2.8–v.10.3.8 or Rosetta to get it working.

 

And despite what some of the Gizmodo comments say, it is legit and everything is in working order.

Edited January 8, 2013 by AGX-17

[LadyCrimson]

1 - does it work on Win7

2 - are any of those files only the Photoshop editor, or is the 'Photoshop CS2" going to install the whole "suite" of programs? Do I/would I want all those all other programs?

 

....I still use PaintShopPro9 and it's fine for most editing stuff.

[Gfted1]

I couldnt figure out which link I was supposed to choose either.

[Tigranes]

If you want Photoshop, download PhSp_CS2_English.exe at bottom of page. Ignore the Suite. Likewise for all other individual programs.

[Hormalakh]

Wow ingenious. Increase market share of your software by giving an older version. People will use it and see that they need it and then some will undoubtedly go out and buy the newest version. You also limit the pirate problem.

 

I noticed they're also doing monthly subscriptions for their newest suite.

 

Very interesting business decisions.

[Gorth]

I might just try it and see if it beats Gimp. Thanks for the heads up

[Spider]

Do note that this version is very old, and has improved greatly since then. It's still very good at what it does though.

 

But still, it's really a great decision by Adobe. I personally think Adobe is one of the companies that's benefitted the most from piracy. A lot of people pirating Photoshop would never be able to justify a purchase (it's too expensive for personal use), but having a lot of people comfortable with your products help a lot selling it to their target audience. Photoshopping wouldn't have been commonly used expression if it wasn't for piracy I'm sure. Which is why Adobe never really tried fighting piracy in any serious matter in the past, other than the token resistance to keep professional customers honest.

 

Personally I have photoshop on my work computer, so I am more enthusiastic about the other products on that list.

 

Indesign is always nice to have (haven't used it since school though) and even more so Premiere. Haven't found any other free video editing software I like, but Premiere was quite good.

[Hormalakh]

And honestly, if people couldn't pirate Photoshop, it would be a really obscure tool known only by professionals and it would be difficult for aspiring graphics designers to learn the tool. It is a very complex tool afterall.

[Valsuelm]

I might just try it and see if it beats Gimp. Thanks for the heads up

 

The latest versions of Gimp vs this old version of Adobe? No, it doesn't.

 

And to anyone thinking this is a good deal from Adobe and aren't already aware:

http://www.gimp.org/

 

One of the best pieces of totally free software out there.

Edited January 10, 2013 by Valsuelm

[AGX-17]

I might just try it and see if it beats Gimp. Thanks for the heads up

 

The latest versions of Gimp vs this old version of Adobe? No, it doesn't.

 

And to anyone thinking this is a good deal from Adobe and aren't already aware:

http://www.gimp.org/

 

One of the best pieces of totally free software out there.

 

Yes, Gimp is certainly better than Photoshop CS2.

 

But... it's still not on par with CS3. And that's not to mention the fact that Gimp doesn't perform the functions of the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite (video editing, web development, etc.) which is also available for free here, old though it may be. And like Hormalakh said, at the very least it gives you a free chance to familiarize yourself with the basic function and interface of the industry standard visual creativity package.

 

Furthermore, there's a certain logical inconsistency when you proclaim Gimp is better than PS by virtue of the fact that it's free, but Adobe giving away an old release of its Creative Suite for free is a "bad deal."

Edited January 10, 2013 by AGX-17

[Spider]

Tried Gimp in the past, but never could get used to it. Found the interface to be messy and horribly unintuitive.

 

Of course, I was used to PS before, so that could have been why. And it was a long time again, so hopefully it's improved in those regards since. (been at least five years since last time I gave it a look, possibly more)

 

Edit: Went over and looked at some screenshots, it certainly seems they've improved their interface by a lot.

Edited January 10, 2013 by Spider

[LadyCrimson]

I felt the same way about Gimp, ages past when I tried it. I wish Paint Shop Pro was still making new versions, altho Corel was sorta ruining it anyway. But for the cheaper image/graphic editor, it was a decent product back then, imo. For photo editing/RAW converting I just use the Canon software, since I only do minor photo tweaking, none of the fancy digital stuff.

 

I tried Photoshop once a long time ago, I don't remember what version...hubby had it from work once. But I generally felt the things it could do that PSP couldn't weren't things I needed. But if it was cheaper ($300 say), I'd certainly buy a copy. Just can't justify buying it at their current prices for the very occasional reasons I'd want to use it.

 

Edit: I guess Corel is still putting PSP out, actually...for some reason I thought they had eliminated it and were just putting out a simpler photo-editing package ... but I don't like what I'm seeing.

Edited January 10, 2013 by LadyCrimson

[Janmanden]

Sounds great to me too.

 

I tried my hand with Photoshop back in 2000, but at the time it seemed too complicated for me and the learning curve was too flat for my limited time and since it was just too expensive to bother with considering that a mix of Paint brush and various semi-not-quite-pro-.-.-.-actually-quite-far-from-pro freeware graphics apps and online tools since has proven quite useful and efficient for my 'utilitarian' needs..

 

Photoshop CS2 works fine on Windows 8 Pro, but it asks me to register each time I use it, even though I already did it on the first run and even though I selected "do no register" on the third use and every time since then.. Guess I'll have to fiddle around with some registry key somewhere to suppress that.

[AGX-17]

Photoshop CS2 works fine on Windows 8 Pro, but it asks me to register each time I use it, even though I already did it on the first run and even though I selected "do no register" on the third use and every time since then.. Guess I'll have to fiddle around with some registry key somewhere to suppress that.

 

That's probably a side-effect of the fact that it's now free. Normally you need to register and provide an activation key with a machine limit (4 machines with my copy of CS3,) for each copy of PS/CS. They probably just did a quick and lazy tweak so that it would work without the activation/registration.

 

Tried Gimp in the past, but never could get used to it. Found the interface to be messy and horribly unintuitive.

 

Gimp's UI/layout is less than optimal. It also has a habit of jumping its many individual image windows to the bottom if any other windows are open (i.e. your Pictures folder.)

Edited January 12, 2013 by AGX-17