can photoshop cs6 work on Mojave?

Adobe Photoshop CS6 13.0.0 works on Mojave but its installer needs some tricks:

When the installation starts in macOS 10.14 there is an error: "Installer failed to initialize. This could be due to a missing file. Please download Adobe Support Advisor to detect the problem."

This workaround should get the installer going: Right-click (or Control-click) the installer and choose Show Package Contents. In the Install window that opens in the Finder, go to the Contents/MacOS folder, and in there, double-click Install. That will open the Terminal application, some lines of code will automatically run, and the actual Installer should successfully launch. Further not so important updates (Adobe Bridge CS6, Adobe Extension Manager CS6, Photoshop Camera Raw 7) also fail in macOS 10.14 while they are OK in macOS 10.13.

Yes, CS6 works in Mojave. I have most of the Master Collection installed.

I also installed Illustrator CS5 since it was the last version that can import Freehand documents. I didn't have to do anything special to get the CS apps on the drive. The installers ran as expected.

About a year ago (maybe not quite that long) Adobe removed all pages on their site for the CS6 updates. The only way to update the apps after installing now is to choose the update option from within one of the apps. I just did that today, and surprisingly, it updated Camera Raw. Otherwise, I have all of the last point updates saved on an external drive.

The oddball for CS6 in Mojave is After Effects. When you install the suite, After Effects has a "no" symbol through it. I installed my backed up updater and it then took on a normal icon, but wouldn't run. Instead, I got an OS message that the app couldn't be run in this version of macOS. But then I choose update within Photoshop CS6. That displayed the same point update for After Effects I had just installed. I let it update AF again, and then it worked.

Haha! 😀 I have exactly the same setup on a 2018 Mini. Monterey on the internal SSD, and Mojave on an external USB-C SSD. Can't remember if I put QT 7 Pro on it. Likely, but I'd have to look.

Thanks for the note. I have cleanly installed Mojave so maybe stuff from old installs helps with the CS6 installer.

My main Mac mini 2018 internal disk is Monterey but I have Mojave on an external disk (an internal Mojave APFS volume also works on another MacBook Pro 2014 with Big Sur) that I occasionally Option-boot to run Lightroom 6.14, Photoshop CS 6 13.0.0, QuickTime Player Pro 7 or MPEG Streamclip. I also have a similar VMware Fusion Mojave VM in Monterey for occasional light use.

(PowerBook G4 upstairs is for occasional Firewire DV import and analog-to-DV conversions and MacPlus in the basement for old apps.)

Ah, so you were in the contest to be the last person still using Adobe CS6? 😉

Nope. Adobe CS6 doesn’t work on Mojave.

There are many alternatives to Adobe products, and you can also subscribe to and upgrade current and supported Adobe products. Procreate, Flying Meat Acorn, Affinity Photo, GIMP, etc. (here is a list of alternatives to Photoshop)

Or you’ll need a Mac capable of older versions of macOS (and revert to and stay on those older macOS or OS X versions), if you want to re-join the last-to-use-CS6 contest and to resume use CS6.

Chuckeebear wrote:

Thank you Mr Hoffman. You made me laugh and made my day!

I will go backwards : )

Might also want to try running High Sierra installed as a guest, using a hypervisor installed on a newer version of macOS. That’ll let you isolate your dependence on CS6 to that guest, while moving the rest of your environment forward.