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Is El Capitan compatible with Adobe CS5?

Is El Capitan compatible with Adobe CS5?

Posted on Oct 17, 2015 11:53 AM

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67 replies

Sep 11, 2017 3:57 AM in response to Holger Jensen

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

Dec 10, 2015 8:30 AM in response to Shaye11

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.

Dec 16, 2015 1:01 PM in response to NickTheFish

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.

Dec 16, 2015 2:49 PM in response to NickTheFish

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.

Jan 9, 2016 2:51 PM in response to NickTheFish

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....

Jan 9, 2016 3:02 PM in response to Robin8

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.

Jan 13, 2016 2:25 AM in response to Robin8

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!

Jan 13, 2016 2:43 AM in response to pmiles

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.

Jan 13, 2016 5:17 AM in response to Lanny

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!

Is El Capitan compatible with Adobe CS5?

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