9 ms·

Adobe Creative Suite 2 ESR (2005)

49 points by vkaku 3y ago

vkaku 3y ago
When Adobe shut down its activation servers for CS2, they released a fully offline version of CS2 with pre-activated keys, which they also released. This is available on the Internet Archive and it could actually help some folks. This is one of those good things we need to give Adobe credit for.
- eurekin 3y ago
  Is this still available?
  - forgotpwd16 3y ago
    >However in recent years it seems that this version too has disappeared to the sands of time as Adobe attempts to cut costs and can no longer justify hosting a distribution server for a 15 year old version of its software. Not on official Adobe site. It's available on submitted IA link.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    Did you click the submission link?
  - christoph 3y ago
    It's mirrored on the link. You can either download the full 7z (on the right side of the screen) of all Mac & PC versions, or expand the right hand box and download each individual application.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
davikr 3y ago
> But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers. While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers.
raverbashing 3y ago
"its Creative Suite" doesn't anyone know the possessive pronouns anymore?
- vic-traill 3y ago
  Alas, no, not so much. This is a very frequent flyer; you have to damn near tackle writers (literally and metaphorically) to stop them from using an apostrophe in the possessive form of the pronoun 'it'.
  - trealira 3y ago
    To be fair, in most other nouns, adding an apostrophe and an s at the end can both be short for "is" and signify the possessive form (e.g., "Tim's a jerk" means "Tim is a jerk," but "Tim's house" means the house Tim lives in). By analogy, it makes sense for "it's" to both mean the possessive form and to be short for "it is," but instead we spell the possessive form as "its." Since the difference is only in writing, not pronunciation, it makes sense for a native speaker to forget it. I see the same mistake with "who's" and "whose." The latter is the possessive form (e.g. "Whose phone is this?") and the former is a contraction of "who is" (e.g., "The only kid who's sitting quietly"). I see people write "who's" instead of "whose," for probably the same reason, since relative pronouns also replace normal nouns. Here's a comparison with the word order changed to make it obvious ("who" replaces "Mom" here): This phone is Mom's. This phone is who's/whose? I know the normal word order is "Whose phone is this?" though.
    - raverbashing 3y ago
      > in most other nouns Yes but it is not a noun And you don't use it for "his" or "hers" or "theirs" (So maybe that should be the hint people follow - if you can use "theirs" it's "its", then)
- vkaku 3y ago
  That one is autocomplete and sometimes it's brain fog. (Correct usage happens 50% of the time)
Euphorbium 3y ago
And to this day that version is like 10 years ahead of gimp.
- noman-land 3y ago
  And to this day, gimp is still free.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    Free and open source and being improved upon without a direct expectation of financial compensation from you, the user.
    - Euphorbium 3y ago
      Maybe some day it might even reach the state that photoshop had 10 years ago, who knows. Anything is possible.
mft_ 3y ago
I randomly happened upon eBay listings for CS6 earlier today. I was slightly staggered to see that a legitimate copy is going for ˜600-700EUR on eBay - that's ˜11-year-old software! Presumably this is because it's the last version that's non-subscription? I wonder if prices have actually been appreciating?
- benbristow 3y ago
  Surprising as those copies are quite easily 'available' with a copy + paste of a certain version of amtlib.dll
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    amtlib is the verification logic vendor ?
    - Zetobal 3y ago
      For now, Adobe is trying out (opt in basis) a more invasive kernel module.
      - jwells89 3y ago
        That’s not likely to work out well for the Mac version with how Apple has been steadily working towards removing support for third party kernel extensions in macOS. I wonder what they’ll resort to after that comes to pass.
    - benbristow 3y ago
      Let's say the 'replacement' dll file isn't very good at verification.
      - agumonkey 3y ago
        yeah, I was just curious if this was the whole security point in their software.
  - 3y ago
crtasm 3y ago
I got it at the time and still occasionally use Photoshop & Illustrator CS2 on Windows 10, it's great.
leoh 3y ago
Anyone know if this bad boy will run under wine?
- haunter 3y ago
  Should work
dang 3y ago
Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... (Submitted title was "Adobe gave away it's Creative Suite 2 software 11 years ago". )
regus 3y ago
Does this work with modern day MacOS?
- haunter 3y ago
  No the Mac version (that was PowerPC only) but the Windows version might work with Wine
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mk_stjames 3y ago
I worked my way through high school and early college as a graphic artist for a small studio working entirely in Photoshop, starting with version ~3.0, I think, and ending around the time of the "CS" changeover. The basic operation of the toolset in Photoshop did not change under my hand basically that entire time, with additions to the tools increasing productivity only marginally. The major boost came from the speed of HDD's and CPU's allowing for larger images to load and be worked on quicker- NOT some wholesale improvement of the tools to manipulate the images. It turns out, for a large amount of work when dealing with graphics, images, photos, etc... what you need is cropping, movining, selection with feathering and growing of selection pool, cut/copy/paste with layering and transparency, basic shifting of the color via hue and saturation, and tools to edit selective color ranges. That covers 95% of use in the 1990's and it actually still does today. I still have a copy of CS4 for windows that I move from machine to machine and have done so for more than a decade. But for quick things on my M1 Mac where I no longer have Photoshop, I default to Photopea, which cloned the early Photoshop experience nearly 1:1. I think this says a lot about how important is it to get right the user interface mapping to the toolset (and vice versa), and how the two go hand-in-hand in the creation of great power-user software.
jwells89 3y ago
It’s unfortunate that Adobe doesn’t sell a single purchase ESR version of CS that’s in terms of features roughly equivalent to CS2. If that’s too much of a financial burden they could charge a fifth of the purchase price every 4 years or so for continued updates (which you then don’t have to pay if you don’t need). For a lot of people CS2 is more than adequate, with most features having been added since not being useful enough to justify losing access to their work if they don’t pay their subscription bill one month.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Isn't gimp or something else actually open on par with something as old as cs2 by now? Why even stick to this stuff so hard, working against a company that's working against you instead of just letting them go fly a kite?
night-rider 3y ago
I have a copy of this. I love the old Photoshop. It does the job well. I tried new Photoshop and it ruined my workflow. It had obscure functionality/features I am not familiar with, and I am too lazy to learn all the newfangled features. I tried it on my friend's computer and they have an Adobe subscription, so it wasn't a 'warez' release. And now apparently they're tacking on AI features which sound good, but possibly over-engineered now.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
clircle 3y ago
I'm looking to learn a bit about Adobe Illustrator. Would this be a good starting point?
- vkaku 3y ago
  Yes.
- illwrks 3y ago
  With illustrator, the most important tools are the pen tool, stroke (and the "expand" feature to convert a weighted stroke to a fill shape), the flip tool, basic shapes, pathfinder and align tool. Best of luck with it!
Lammy 3y ago
They also did this for CS3, but one had to create an Adobe account and provide their original serial number to get a new offline serial number and new offline installer.
xtiansimon 3y ago
Yes and no—they exclude Adobe Acrobat Pro.

49 points by vkaku 3y ago

When Adobe shut down its activation servers for CS2, they released a fully offline version of CS2 with pre-activated keys, which they also released. This is available on the Internet Archive and it could actually help some folks. This is one of those good things we need to give Adobe credit for.

eurekin 3y ago
Is this still available?
- forgotpwd16 3y ago
  >However in recent years it seems that this version too has disappeared to the sands of time as Adobe attempts to cut costs and can no longer justify hosting a distribution server for a 15 year old version of its software. Not on official Adobe site. It's available on submitted IA link.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  Did you click the submission link?
- christoph 3y ago
  It's mirrored on the link. You can either download the full 7z (on the right side of the screen) of all Mac & PC versions, or expand the right hand box and download each individual application.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

davikr 3y ago

> But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers. While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers.

raverbashing 3y ago

"its Creative Suite" doesn't anyone know the possessive pronouns anymore?

vic-traill 3y ago
Alas, no, not so much. This is a very frequent flyer; you have to damn near tackle writers (literally and metaphorically) to stop them from using an apostrophe in the possessive form of the pronoun 'it'.
- trealira 3y ago
  To be fair, in most other nouns, adding an apostrophe and an s at the end can both be short for "is" and signify the possessive form (e.g., "Tim's a jerk" means "Tim is a jerk," but "Tim's house" means the house Tim lives in). By analogy, it makes sense for "it's" to both mean the possessive form and to be short for "it is," but instead we spell the possessive form as "its." Since the difference is only in writing, not pronunciation, it makes sense for a native speaker to forget it. I see the same mistake with "who's" and "whose." The latter is the possessive form (e.g. "Whose phone is this?") and the former is a contraction of "who is" (e.g., "The only kid who's sitting quietly"). I see people write "who's" instead of "whose," for probably the same reason, since relative pronouns also replace normal nouns. Here's a comparison with the word order changed to make it obvious ("who" replaces "Mom" here): This phone is Mom's. This phone is who's/whose? I know the normal word order is "Whose phone is this?" though.
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    > in most other nouns Yes but it is not a noun And you don't use it for "his" or "hers" or "theirs" (So maybe that should be the hint people follow - if you can use "theirs" it's "its", then)
vkaku 3y ago
That one is autocomplete and sometimes it's brain fog. (Correct usage happens 50% of the time)

Euphorbium 3y ago

And to this day that version is like 10 years ahead of gimp.

noman-land 3y ago
And to this day, gimp is still free.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  Free and open source and being improved upon without a direct expectation of financial compensation from you, the user.
  - Euphorbium 3y ago
    Maybe some day it might even reach the state that photoshop had 10 years ago, who knows. Anything is possible.

mft_ 3y ago

I randomly happened upon eBay listings for CS6 earlier today. I was slightly staggered to see that a legitimate copy is going for ˜600-700EUR on eBay - that's ˜11-year-old software! Presumably this is because it's the last version that's non-subscription? I wonder if prices have actually been appreciating?

benbristow 3y ago
Surprising as those copies are quite easily 'available' with a copy + paste of a certain version of amtlib.dll
- agumonkey 3y ago
  amtlib is the verification logic vendor ?
  - Zetobal 3y ago
    For now, Adobe is trying out (opt in basis) a more invasive kernel module.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      That’s not likely to work out well for the Mac version with how Apple has been steadily working towards removing support for third party kernel extensions in macOS. I wonder what they’ll resort to after that comes to pass.
  - benbristow 3y ago
    Let's say the 'replacement' dll file isn't very good at verification.
    - agumonkey 3y ago
      yeah, I was just curious if this was the whole security point in their software.
- 3y ago

crtasm 3y ago

I got it at the time and still occasionally use Photoshop & Illustrator CS2 on Windows 10, it's great.

leoh 3y ago

Anyone know if this bad boy will run under wine?

haunter 3y ago
Should work

dang 3y ago

Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... (Submitted title was "Adobe gave away it's Creative Suite 2 software 11 years ago". )

regus 3y ago

Does this work with modern day MacOS?

haunter 3y ago
No the Mac version (that was PowerPC only) but the Windows version might work with Wine
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mk_stjames 3y ago

I worked my way through high school and early college as a graphic artist for a small studio working entirely in Photoshop, starting with version ~3.0, I think, and ending around the time of the "CS" changeover. The basic operation of the toolset in Photoshop did not change under my hand basically that entire time, with additions to the tools increasing productivity only marginally. The major boost came from the speed of HDD's and CPU's allowing for larger images to load and be worked on quicker- NOT some wholesale improvement of the tools to manipulate the images. It turns out, for a large amount of work when dealing with graphics, images, photos, etc... what you need is cropping, movining, selection with feathering and growing of selection pool, cut/copy/paste with layering and transparency, basic shifting of the color via hue and saturation, and tools to edit selective color ranges. That covers 95% of use in the 1990's and it actually still does today. I still have a copy of CS4 for windows that I move from machine to machine and have done so for more than a decade. But for quick things on my M1 Mac where I no longer have Photoshop, I default to Photopea, which cloned the early Photoshop experience nearly 1:1. I think this says a lot about how important is it to get right the user interface mapping to the toolset (and vice versa), and how the two go hand-in-hand in the creation of great power-user software.

jwells89 3y ago

It’s unfortunate that Adobe doesn’t sell a single purchase ESR version of CS that’s in terms of features roughly equivalent to CS2. If that’s too much of a financial burden they could charge a fifth of the purchase price every 4 years or so for continued updates (which you then don’t have to pay if you don’t need). For a lot of people CS2 is more than adequate, with most features having been added since not being useful enough to justify losing access to their work if they don’t pay their subscription bill one month.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
Isn't gimp or something else actually open on par with something as old as cs2 by now? Why even stick to this stuff so hard, working against a company that's working against you instead of just letting them go fly a kite?

night-rider 3y ago

I have a copy of this. I love the old Photoshop. It does the job well. I tried new Photoshop and it ruined my workflow. It had obscure functionality/features I am not familiar with, and I am too lazy to learn all the newfangled features. I tried it on my friend's computer and they have an Adobe subscription, so it wasn't a 'warez' release. And now apparently they're tacking on AI features which sound good, but possibly over-engineered now.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

clircle 3y ago

I'm looking to learn a bit about Adobe Illustrator. Would this be a good starting point?

vkaku 3y ago
Yes.
illwrks 3y ago
With illustrator, the most important tools are the pen tool, stroke (and the "expand" feature to convert a weighted stroke to a fill shape), the flip tool, basic shapes, pathfinder and align tool. Best of luck with it!

Lammy 3y ago

They also did this for CS3, but one had to create an Adobe account and provide their original serial number to get a new offline serial number and new offline installer.

xtiansimon 3y ago

Yes and no—they exclude Adobe Acrobat Pro.