Downgrade 10.6 to 10.5

Question

Downgrade 10.6 to 10.5

Hello,

I recently upgraded to 10.6 from 10.5 because I had issues with Capture One Pro 5 crashing under 10.5; switching to 10.6 indeed solved the problem, but this created a new issue as well: now Photoshop CS2 won't work anymore.

In the meanwhile, the people at Phase One found and fixed the Capture One crash issue in 10.5, so now that this problem has been solved, I'm tempted to go back to 10.5 from 10.6 to fix the Photoshop issue.

I would upgrade to a more recent version of Photoshop CS instead if I could, but business isn't as good as it used to be in these harsh economical times, so an upgrade from Adode CS2 Standard to CS5 or 5.5 (or just Photoshop CS 5, for that matter) is out of my reach right now, budget-wise.

Now here's my question...

Since my MacBook came with 10.5, can I simply downgrade from 10.6 to 10.5 without much trouble (without backups, file restoration ,etc.)?

If not, do I need to make a backup of my disk in Snow Leopard? And how do I restore my personal settings, files and such, once I've downgraded?

I wish I had made a backup while running 10.5, but I never thought Photoshop would stop working (I should've known better, though: it's an old software). And although I don't use PS everyday, it's an integral part of my workflow. I thought about Photoshop Elements, but it doesn't have a LAB mode, which is critical for my work. I did okay so far without Photoshop, but I'll eventually hit a wall if I don't find a solution to this issue.

Thank you for your time pondering and replying to this question,

Jeff

MacBook Pro 15, Mac OS X (10.6.8), C1Pro, Adobe CS 2 Std, FCStudio 2

Posted on Oct 16, 2011 3:46 PM

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Answer 1

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

Oct 16, 2011 3:57 PM in response to Jean-Francois Blais

Do you really have no backups at all? None from before you installed Snow Leopard, and none now? Because if you don't, there is no way to return to Leopard without erasing all of your data.

Shut your Mac off right now, and do not turn it back on until you have an external hard drive connected and ready to make a full system backup. Use a cloning utility like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Copy the entire hard drive to the external.

Post back when that's done and I'll offer some more to suggestions on how to proceed.

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Answer 2

Oct 16, 2011 5:09 PM in response to Király

I do have an external hard drive connected to my MBPro, with a system backup on it (but it was made after 10.6 was installed, not while I was running 10.5).

Judging by your answer, I guess the downgrade won't be as easy as, say, going from 10.4 to 10.3...

If I understand correctly, I will need to do a clean install of 10.5 on my HDD and use my backup system files to restore my original setup.

Thanks for the quick reply, much appreciated. 🙂

On a side note, I just realized there's a good bargain on Photoshop CS5 (although not on the entire Creative Suite). I don't really use Indesign or Illustrator, so I might be better off buying the upgrade and stick to 10.6, which as been working flawlessly besides that Photoshop issue.

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Answer 3

Oct 24, 2011 8:43 PM in response to Jean-Francois Blais

Well, it seems I won't need to downgrade after all.

After wondering if the whole process was worth the hassle, I finally decided to upgrade Photoshop instead. But while I was waiting for CS5 to be delivered, I thought I'd try to reinstall Adobe CS2 altogether, just to see if reinstalling the whole software would work.

To my surprise, it worked!

Not only does PS CS2 works perfectly under 10.6, it actually works better than under 10.5!

So I cancelled the upgrade I had ordered from Adobe, since the Photoshop beginners class I was about to start teaching used CS2, the version I'm currently using.

So my advice to Photoshop or Adobe Creative Suite users: try to reinstall after upgrading to 10.6 if the Adobe software is showing issues or if it stops working.

In the meanwhile, I made a backup of my system disk on an external HDD.

And thanks for the reply, Kiraly. Quite helpful, even if it didn't answer all of my questions.

Cheers,

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Answer 4

ds store

Level 7

30,855 points

Oct 25, 2011 7:03 AM in response to Jean-Francois Blais

Reinstalling kicked in Rosetta.

Just don't upgrade to Rosetta less Lion, that will break things for sure. 🙂

Cloning backups, etc, a huge source of info

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3358920

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