Is El Capitan compatible with Adobe CS5?

Well, I'm in exactly the same boat. The functional benefits of ELC simply don't compare to losing access to CS5. It still think that installing Yosemite in a Parallels VM would work, but it's a ton of work which I don't have the stomach for right now. I'm excited to learn about the Affinity products... frankly, I don't use the Adobe Suite enough to be become a power user in any of them; they are wonderfully powerful apps, but stupidly non-intuitive to use. The key for me is the inDesign replacement. When that comes out, I'll give Affinity a serious look and will be happy to lose Adobe if it's as good as one would hope.

I know this is an older thread, but I wanted to post in case anybody googles this.

I just did a clean install of CS5 on El Cap (10.11.3), and everything seems to be working fine so far - including Illustrator (no crashes yet). Up until now, I had been booting into Lion to use CS5 (I refuse to use the cloud service, and Adobe has lost a 30+ year faithful customer). I've been using the Affinity products to replace Adobe since upgrading to El Cap... overall, not bad, but I can be MUCH more productive in Photoshop/Illustrator, having used both since v 1.0.

After installing, upon launch, I was prompted to install the legacy JRE. It took me right to the Apple page to download, and I downloaded and installed it without a hitch.

NOTE: The Adobe updater did not work for me, so I downloaded the updates manually from Adobe.

Photoshop 12.0.4

Illustrator 15.0.2

The Fireworks updater failed, but the installed version seems to work fine (surprisingly).

I have no use for Bridge, Device Central, or Extension Manager, so I don't care about those.

I seriously doubt that I'll ever upgrade to Sierra, so Apple has probly lost a 30+ year faithful customer as well. Sad.

I spoke slightly too soon. Illustrator ran fine for a few hours, no crashing or weird behavior. No problem saving files, etc. I did NOT experience the eyedropper bug. However, it DID crash on quit, and my precise cursors preference was not saved.

I followed the instructions on this page:

http://capitalmacservice.com/possible-fix-for-mac-adobe-illustrator-cs5-crash-on -exit/

... and everything is now fine. New prefs are saved properly, and no crashing on quit.

Dear Holgar,

For what it may be worth, if you have a big external drive create a second partition for Lion and CS5. You will be able to run all CS5 apps perfectly. Lion is still available from Apple as an installer disc. Of course you have to install Lion on your computer first. That may not be possible with the latest Apple models. I have arranged four 500 GB partitions with 3 Apple OS systems (El Cap. Lion and Snow Leopard) and one vacant partition for flexibility. All on a 2GB internal drive. I shift complete OS’s with Carbon Copy Cloner and I avoid Time Machine as it is messy to manage and greedy with space. I also have four duplicate start-up systems on an external LaCie 3TB drive partitioned into 5 sections.

This arrangement enables me to use old systems complete complete with apps which all work together. Sure, the browser fail but that is why I have El Cap. More importantly I am not forced to comply with all the unnecessary and costly unwanted upgrades that Apple and Adobe force upon their customers.

This way of working will soon be impossible for new computer users, as the old installer discs will not work with new computers. So having complete systems on ones own drives is essential. My advice to all users is, if you are serious about saving time and money, buy big drives and do as I have done. Start now while Lion is still available.

Best Wishes,

Tony Foster

Are you using the latest version of Adobe Bridge:

Under ELC Photoshop CS5 worked for me too and I didn't noticed the acrobat trash problem.

Illustrator CS5 is the big problem and I've heard Indesign is also a problem but I don't use it so much.

You do not state which version of OS X you're currently using. Reinstalling that OS could fix your crashing problem.

Thank you pmiles, I will have to consider my options then.

Even CS3 works with El Capitan.

OS X 10.8.5

Really? Hmmm... interesting...

Thanks, very enlightening!

Yup, I learned that the hard way a long time ago. Have a WD back up drive and use SOS cloud service.

Yes, agree!

Wow, well that's really telling, huh? smh