Is El Capitan compatible with Adobe CS5?

Deep joy, after all the hassle of reverting back to Yosemite from a Time Machine back-up and then copying back all the files. mail etc I'd created since moving to El Capitan, I have a machine that works.

Thanks to apple & adobe I've lost nearly two days trying to make CS5 work on ELC and all the palaver of upgrading and then reverting back.

If you use CS5 don't upgrade to ELC until there is a clear announcement that the incompatibility is fixed.

I refuse to pay the extortionate fees charges by adobe for the subscriptions system. If you start you are locked in and the minute you stop paying all your work is lost due to backward incompatibility and ELC didn't make it worth it either.

El Capitan is only partially compatible with Adobe CS5.

Once you install the legacy version of Java (6) CS5 apps will work with differing degrees of success.

Illustrator CS5 is a particular problem. It doesn't save preferences like units (mm or pixels etc), the eyedropper tool will crash the program when sampling colour is gradients or raster images and on quitting the programs shuts down and crashes at the same time which might be why preferences aren't saved.

I am about to revert back to Yosemite on two machines using a TM backups which is a real hassle. Work, mail, photos etc need to be saved out so I can get everything up to date once back on Yo.

There is not enough new good stuff in El Capitan to justify paying adobe the CC subscription for their latest software and I am perfectly happy with CS5.

ps.

I trawled through all the forums trying to find a fix and I've played with installing the latest Java 8 and playing with the system as some have recommended but nothing I've tried works.

If anybody out there has found the solution to getting CS5 Illustrator working perfectly with El Capitan I can't wait to hear from you.

Yes, but it'll complain about needing Java until you install the current version of Java from Apple.

In any case, I'd suggest making a bootable backup clone of your HD before upgrading. Look through the various posts on this forum to see the problems others are having.

Apple has said they don't have to say anything, do anything or warn you. The section O in the 10.11 EULA states this clearly. If you have an issue with any product outside of Apple's development even if the developer swears up and down it's compatible with 10.11 Apple does not provide any assistance whatsoever and you should not expect them fix other developers problems under any circumstance.
If you use your mac without a backup and you upgrade and something stops working the fault is yours according to a binding document you agreed to, weather you read it or not is not the concern of Apple, you can not install the software without agreeing to it in total. If you have a TM backup you can restore your mac to a previous instance where the OS and the software functions as expected, if not you will need to format your HD to downgrade. If you don't have a backup of your computer in this day and age you are potentially putting yourself in a position where all your data and functionality could be irreversibly lost for an investment of less than $50 - $100 to prevent it.

I have CS5 and use mostly Acrobat Pro and Photoshop. Had no problems with Photoshop (so far) but a minor though annoying problem with Acrobat in that the trash would not empty pdf docs after upgrading to El Capital 10.11.2 without a restart. Finally fixed it by fixing the permissions in Acrobat Pro.

Adobe is notoriously bad about keeping up with OSX updates and those of other applications as well. As I said, I have CS5 installed on my computer and will never, repeat never, sign up for any monthly Adobe accounts in the Cloud, wherever their clouds happen to be. Another thing I've just become aware of is the "create PDF" plugin that comes with Acrobat Pro (which appears in the browser menu and allows users to save a web page as a pdf document) has just been disabled by Firefox, my preferred browser, because it is no longer compatible with the newest update of Firefox. I guess I'll just phase Adobe out of my applications as OSX and other updates render Adobe's offerings obsolete.

Great to know. Not sure what to do. My computer is crashing daily, sometimes twice daily and from what I read, it's been recommended to upgrade the OS. But I can't live w/o using my Adobe PS CS5 software so I really don't want to take a chance after reading of yours and others experience w/ El Capitan. Really, really prefer NOT to switch to cloud software. I personally think it is a scam....

Your options are limited as Adobe has no intention to fix any software that isn't on their cloud system. Everything before it is considered legacy software... aka use at your own risk. While it may run, it may not as well. The only thing you can do is either, live with the problem, upgrade to their cloud service, or revert your OS back to a time when it was fully supported by Adobe... which is probably 2-3 OSes ago.

Photoshop CS5 was OK in El Capitan, at least I can't remember any problems before I reverted back to Yosemite. Illustrator CS5 was the real problem for me and others have said InDesign CS5 is also a problem.

If you are mainly a photoshop user the Adobe Photographers cloud package is more reasonably priced, Photoshop & Lightroom together.

Since reverting back to Yosemite there isn't much in El Capitan I miss, so your other option is to work out why your machine is crashing and fix it. Is your HD too full. Have you used Disk Utility to repair Disk Permissions and Verify Disk. Can you remember installing something that coincided with the machine starting to crash. Is your RAM healthy and do you have enough. A dodgy bit of RAM can cause problems. Use Activity Monitor to check if there is something using a lot of CPU and memory.

Good luck!

CS5 is compatible with Yosemite, one version back from latest El Capitan.

In terms of who caused the incompatibility the only variable is the OS. Yosemite was fine, El Capitan isn't. Most people seem to think the problem lies with Java and apple produced the legacy 6 version which was OK on Yosemite but not perfect on El Capitan. Current Java is developed by Oracle. I read lot's of forums about modifying Java's installation and spent a lot of time trying but nothing worked.

I can't help thinking that apple could fix a new legacy version of Java (if that is the problem) to make CS5 work in EL C. If they did I would switch to EL C again. Meanwhile I am happy for now, Yosemite is fine and CS5 works.

The real pain is that one day I may be forced to subscribe to Adobe CC and once I do I'm locked in because the new files I create will not be compatible with old CS5 software. Stop subscribing and your work is lost unless you save a legacy version of every file you create.

CS3 works with El Capitan?

Maybe it does, maybe something is different to later CSs or did you do something clever the rest of us would like to know about.

Since reverting back to Yosemite mid-December I hadn't bothered reading all the blogs about CS5 / El C incompatibility, happy to just get on with my work. I had a quick look just now though and saw lots of complaints about the famous crashing problems with Illustrator and no news on the fix.

If you have the answer please let us know!

don't expect news on a fix. Adobe dropped support for CS5 years ago and Apple will not fix other peoples problems. Those who got CS to work for their workflow seems to be the same people who did a clean install of CS5 or removed the components with Adobes cleanup tool, then did a clean install, then DL'ed the Apple Java for 2015, but there are exceptions to this rule. Either way CS is history-ware as far as Adobe is concerned and direct talks with them they refused to answer the questions when I asked them about compatibility with 10.11.

It works for some, maybe most but not all.

I might add that CS6 was the last stand-alone download available to Mac and PC users before Adobe forced everyone to go Cloud -- for a price of course -- or stop using their products. Adobe has not updated or provided any fixes for CS6 to make it more compatible with Apple's OSX upgrades but I have found Photoshop and Acrobat to be compatible with El Capitan barring a few glitches, one being an inability to empty the trash of certain PDFs created by Acrobat without a restart of the computer. I thought I had solved the problem by fiddling with Acrobat's permissions but it has reared its ugly head again and I have learned to live with it. If Apple comes up with its own PDF editor and improves Photos enough to be truly competitive with Photoshop I would gladly abandon Adobe forever.

have you looked into this? We mulled it for a time but we are so embedded with CS my only option is to keep CS and redeploy older systems that will run 10.9 until we either go to CC or change our entire workflow

http://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo

I'm not sure this is really a problem caused by adobe.

The only variable for me was the OS X upgrade. I wanted to use CS5 like before.

It would have been good if apple could have tested products for compatibility and if they found bugs either fix them or warn people.

Like hundreds/thousands of others, I've wasted days upgrading OS X, discovery the incompatibilities, trying to fix them and then downgrading to Yosemite again and copying back all the new work, e-mails, photos etc etc etc created while running El C for a few weeks.

It felt really sloppy & careless to me.

Apple have have said nothing on the subject despite receiving thousands of crash reports.