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  • I'm using a Mac from 2009 and OSX 10.6.

    As of today Dropbox is no longer supporting my OS. My browsers options are also now unsupported.

    Does anyone know if I upgrade to El Capitan whether or not my working perfectly fine version of Abobe CS1 will still work?

    I am not willing to pay $49 US a month to be able to resize jpgs and once in a while convert art to CMYK for printing and once in a blue moon making a print ready PDF.

    Are there any CMYK compliant alternatives to PS?

  • edited January 2018
    @jorgefmunoz I think the CS2 link no longer works as they apparently shut down the authentication server to anything under CS4.

    Though I do have it installed from when they initially put it up for free.

    Do you know if it works on OSX El Capitan?

    Indesign CS2 crashes constantly on my current OSX 10.6, so I've been sticking with CS1.

    I spent some time looking around yesterday and Affinity Photo 'looks' like it can do the things I need out of an image editor.... can't try it until I upgrade, so I'm in a catch 22.

  • edited January 2018
    Bad news. The Mac versions of CS1 or CS2 won't work on anything later than OS X 10.6. That's because those were PPC-only apps (not for Intel-based Macs), and 10.6 was the last one to support those. CS3 and later – which are "universal apps" for both Intel and PPC – will all run on versions of OS X up to and including El Capitan. Versions after El Capitan don't support Java6, however, and all of the CS versions need that to one degree or another.

    One way to upgrade your Mac but still run the old software is to make a copy of your current system (at least the OS and apps) on an external hard drive, then shut down the computer and boot from that drive instead whenever you want to run the old software. It's inconvenient, and it'll be slower, but it works.

    Or get your hands on a computer running Windows (any version from this century), and install the free Windows version of CS2 on that. (The key they published a few years ago is a work-around that doesn't require authentication servers, so it still works.) Also inconvenient, and if it's Windows XP you'll want to keep that machine off the internet.

    Or buy a gray-market copy of the CS3 (or later) disks and keys on eBay. The CS3 activation servers are down, so Adobe will give you a key that doesn't require them (like the CS2 key), but only if you give them a valid key (a lesson they learned from the CS2 giveaway). This still limits you to El Capitan.

    If you want to try any of these, let me know and I can explain in more detail how to do it.

    Looking forward, I think Affinity Photo will meet your needs as a Photoshop replacement. I know it supports CMYK but I can't vouch for how well. Affinity is apparently also working on a substitute for InDesign, but I doubt it will be compatible with it (e.g. sharing files), and there's no release date.
  • @JasonAQuest

    Thanks. That's what I was looking for.

    My Mac is from 2009. That is the longest I have ever kept a machine running and I think upgrading the OSX is only a short term solution.

    If money wasn't an object I would just buy a new computer and keep the old machine as is for a scanning station, periodic Photoshop and Indesign work, and a music and movie watching device. I have steadfastly refused to upgrade iTunes since they got rid of coverflow!

    I'm a little torn on whether I should cheap out and buy a mac mini and use the old iMac as a monitor, or buy a laptop and eventually an iPAd Pro as a drawing tablet. I could draw comics on the iPad and storyboards on the laptop with Astropad turning the ipad into a cintiq.

    I spent about 3 months last year on my wife's windows laptop as I was working for a studio that required the absolute latest version of Storyboard Pro that wouldn't run on MacOSX10.6, and it made me less than keen to get a Cintiq Mobile Studio and be forced to.

    Now I just need some work to pay for this fantasy wishlist.....

  • I swear by my Mac Mini, although mine is the last year that they brought out the server version so it's got a little more oomph than the normal mac minis. Still, I'd totally endorse them!
  • My main Mac is a 2011 Mini. A Mini with a third-party monitor (or your iMac if you it can be hooked up that way) is the best bang-for-the-buck Mac available.
  • I recently installed Photoshop and Illustrator to a low spec PC. Didnt knew the Mac links didnt worked anymore : /
  • Both Affinity Photo and Designer (their Illustrator replacement) are very capable and support colour-managed CMYK workflows. I was pretty confident that I could move my entire workflow over to them (they make a decent fist of opening .psd and .ai files respectively) but, unfortunately, I had to go down the Creative Cloud route or lose a client who paid me more than the Adobe sub every month. Affinity’s InDesign replacement (Publisher) should finally make it into beta this year — they’ve shown a video of it working and if it’s even vaguely as capable as the other two, I have high hopes for it.
  • Now *that's* the replacement that I've been waiting for! I would help beta-test the hell out of that thing!
  • Question for you guys: if an editor tells you to pitch or gives you an opening for pitching more, do they want you to do the full pitch submission or do you only need to fill in the pitch document - without finished pages, or finished manuscript?
  • Funny thing: my latest "new" machine is a second-hand 2009 iMac...
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