Comment by jwells89 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jwells89 | Hacker News Reader

I've been using a spread of Adobe alternatives the past several years, including Pixelmator, the Affinity apps, and Sketch and while they're all solid I'm still not as dexterous with any of them as I used to be in Photoshop.

It would make me very happy if Adobe were to release a one time purchase version of PS that in terms of features mirrors a version somewhere between 7.x and CS2 — very few of the features added past that point have any value for me and I'd prefer to have the comparative light weight and higher nativeness (the UI toolkit they switched to in I think CS3 or CS4 just feels bad) of CS1. That'll never happen unfortunately.

If it weren't for potential legal trouble (Adobe can say old licenses are no longer valid) I'd even consider setting up an old Mac for using CS1/CS2 on.

CS2 was free to download from Adobe in 2013. Technically they made it available for people who bought it but they shutdown the activation servers so basically it was a backup option with universal serial numbers.

Archive.org and many other sites have it. Both the Windows and Mac version (well that needs a G4 or G5 PPC Mac)

https://archive.org/details/Adobe-CS2

Woah, the full version without the need for a license?

You would technically need a license

You have to check a box in the installer to pinky swear you do have a license, but it isn't validated in any way.

https://www.photopea.com/ is a drop-in replacment for photoshop CS

> I'd even consider setting up an old Mac for using CS1/CS2

Buy an old Mac online second hand with CS2 already installed on it from someone that originally bought CS2 and installed it on the machine.

As noted in my comment, that's potentially problematic legally if Adobe finds out I'm using that CS2 license for commercial purposes since they have the right to invalidate licenses at any point.

I don’t understand how buying a machine with a legally already installed copy of the program on it could ever get you into trouble.

Also, with an old machine like that it’s better to keep the machine offline anyways.

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