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Turnpike

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 2, 2011
549
315
New York City!
I'm nearing retirement, and am taking on a few projects before I'm done. Tops I'll have them done within the year, so I don't want to invest a ton of time in learning/getting used to new stuff that's not necessary.

I own Adobe's Master Collection CS6 for Mac. I stopped doing Adobe stuff when it didn't work anymore, not realizing at the time that Apple and Adobe were working together to force us to upgrade to the subscription model and how stuff did/didn't work with certain versions of Mac, etc. At that point I was beyond furious, having spent about $6,000 on the Master Suite for BOTH Macs and PC's for my office and suddenly I needed to start spending on a subscription. From that point on I had someone else from another department do any InDesign and PhotoShop stuff I needed.

I tried to use the subscription model recently, and was blown away with the BS of the "Cloud" junk, constant downloads and updates and stuff running in the background, helper apps, fans turning on constantly (2017 iMac Pro w/ a zillion GB of RAM, etc...) and slowing everything down, and I still can't believe this is their "new and better" option.

What I plan to do is top out the RAM and SSD of whatever Mac I have that can run Adobe's CS6, and use it off line, with all updates turned off, etc. I will do my InDesign and PhotoShop projects on there (with Mac's Time Machine for my backup insurance) and doing it all off line and doing just pretty basic outline and photo touchup stuff with InDesign and PhotoShop. I never needed anything complicated and fancy. Even my old photo scanner has basically the same specs as the better new ones, the old software not working on newer machines is the only thing that kept me from using it.

Has anyone else done something like this? Will I have any issues that you can foresee? I have no use for Cloud connecting (I prefer to not have it actually) and everything I'd be doing is offline anyway. Do all the "End of Life" and "no updates or support" warnings that I keep reading about have any downside really, if I'm not connected to the internet, and just doing simple things? Or is it all just marketing and intended to scare people into changing from what used to work?

Any input from anyone who has done something like this or knows about this I'd appreciate... Just want to check before I set up my ideal work station (with stuff from years ago). Thank you!
 

HDFan

Contributor
Jun 30, 2007
6,630
2,876
Do all the "End of Life" and "no updates or support" warnings that I keep reading about have any downside really, if I'm not connected to the internet, and just doing simple things?

If you have an air gap that is never broken then you may be safe (assuming there are no existing problems) as long as you don't get or install files or applications from other places. If you break the air gap to access mail or visit a website then the the "no updates or support" becomes a concern as you are exposed. You can get problems regardless of the complexity of a task.

You will miss out on some of the powerful AI features and other improvements that will make complex tasks so much easier. You might not use any cloud features but Adobe verification requires periodic license checks via the internet.

Be sure you have a valid 3-2-1 backup strategy in place with only 1 of the 3 backups being Time Machine. TM backups have a tendency to fail.
 

gilby101

macrumors 68020
Mar 17, 2010
2,498
1,348
Tasmania
CS6 is not supported by Adobe on any Mac (or PC). But it does continue to work on old Macs. There are workarounds to run CS6 on Catalina (macOS 10.15), but my preference would be High Sierra (macOS 10.13.6).

What old Macs do you have that can run High Sierra? That would likely be an iMac from 2009 to 2017.

Even then you may need to find workarounds to get CS6 installed - google is your friend.

If you have a recent Mac, CS6 is dead. Pixelmator Pro https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ is perhaps the closest to Photoshop and right now has a discounted price.

If your scanner no longer has compatible software, you could try VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/
 
Last edited:

Turnpike

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 2, 2011
549
315
New York City!
CS6 is not supported by Adobe on any Mac (or PC). But it does continue to work on old Macs. There are workarounds to run CS6 on Catalina (macOS 10.15), but my preference would be High Sierra (macOS 10.13.6).

What old Macs do you have that can run High Sierra? That would likely be an iMac from 2009 to 2017.

Even then you may need to find workarounds to get CS6 installed - google is your friend.

If you have a recent Mac, CS6 is dead. Pixelmator Pro https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ is perhaps the closest to Photoshop and right now has a discounted price.

If your scanner no longer has compatible software, you could try VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/


I'd likely be using a 2015 iMac, or a 2017 iMac Pro. Designated just for this project... I don't care what I run on it, since it's just for Adobe stuff, so your suggestion for High Sierra is greatly appreciated. I know some versions worked better with certain Adobe products (from reading) so that you'd suggest something so specific, that's where I'd start.

I'd use Mac apps (Pages mostly) but most of the old style publishers I work with only want stuff in Adobe programs, so this is what I'm stuck with.
 

macrumorsnumpty

macrumors member
Jan 26, 2018
54
17
France
CS6 is not supported by Adobe on any Mac (or PC). But it does continue to work on old Macs. There are workarounds to run CS6 on Catalina (macOS 10.15), but my preference would be High Sierra (macOS 10.13.6).

What old Macs do you have that can run High Sierra? That would likely be an iMac from 2009 to 2017.

Even then you may need to find workarounds to get CS6 installed - google is your friend.

If you have a recent Mac, CS6 is dead. Pixelmator Pro https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ is perhaps the closest to Photoshop and right now has a discounted price.

If your scanner no longer has compatible software, you could try VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/
I use my CS6 design suite on my MacBook Pro m2. Not natively of course. Parallels windows 11 arm version. Works fine. Though resolution is tiny that can be adjusted. It’s a shame you can’t emulate older Mac OS’s as I would prefer that over the Windows version.
 
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