Adobe Photoshop CS6 • Updates and Workarounds.

Back in April, when Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta was released, the company dropped offi­cial sup­port for Win­dows Vista, but it continued supporting Windows 7 and XP users.

A couple of months later, Adobe gave an “advanced warning” that 3D feature upgrades in Photoshop CS6 would no longer be supported with Windows XP. Additionally, Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP.

Even though it is ancient, Windows XP is still the best selling Microsoft OS, and makes up nearly 40% of their market share (after having peaked at 76.1% in January 2007), it is somewhat expected that Adobe’s software developers now insist on the latest upgraded versions of Windows OS (Windows 7 and 8) to run their applications.

This is what Adobe had to say:

Photoshop CS6 already demonstrates that relying on a modern operating system, graphics cards/GPUs and graphics drivers can lead to substantial improvements in 3D, Blur Gallery and Lighting Effect features not available to Windows XP customers. The team hopes that by providing this information early it will help you understand our current decisions around operating system support and where we we’re headed with future releases of Photoshop.

We encourage all customers who are currently using the 3D features in Photoshop CS6 Extended to begin upgrading their video card/hardware now so they can fully take advantage of future Photoshop innovations as soon as they are available.

Creative Cloud members will also be required to update their vRAM to at least 512 MB in order to access 3D features found in Photoshop CS6 Extended.  If they don’t update, they’ll see the following dialog box:

Click here to keep reading  (more…)

Adobe reconsiders upgrade policy expiration.

 
Adobe’s worldwide upgrade policy was set to change after December 31, 2011. Well, now they are announcing a new “special upgrade offer” for CS3 and CS4 customers.

“We want to make sure our customers have plenty of time to determine which offering is best for them. Therefore, we’re pleased to announce that we will offer special introductory upgrade pricing on Creative Suite 6 to customers who own CS3 or CS4. This offer will be available from the time CS6 is released until December 31, 2012. More details on this offer, as well as any introductory offers for existing customers to move to Creative Cloud membership, will be announced when CS6 and Creative Cloud are released later this year.”

I am wondering if this is a response to unhappy customers, or a clever marketing move. What’s your take?

The complete press release is here.

Adobe’s generous upgrade policy ends in 30 days.

For several years, Adobe has offered a generous “three-versions” upgrade policy. This means that users with a prior CS product up to three previous major versions (CS2, CS3, and CS4) would be eligible for discounted upgrade pricing when moving up to the latest release.
This policy will end when the CS6 Suite starts shipping early next year.

According to Adobe, “in order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we are offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011, which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.”

Adobe’s new upgrade policy is worldwide. Click on the links to purchase the Photoshop CS5 Upgrade (Windows Vista/7/XP or Mac OS), and Photoshop Extended CS5 Upgrade (Windows Vista/7/XP or Mac OS) from Amazon, or click here to go directly to the Adobe Store. Hurry up, only 30 days left to take advantage of the 20% discount.