GenJerdan,

Found this activation tool on the Adobe site. You might want to download it now.

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4246


Dave T2

Thanks Happy Friar very nice find.

I believe you can get the whole Creative Suite, I'm somewhat surprised that no one seems interested in After Effects.

Just to be clear, this isn't Adobe intentionally giving anything away. A post by them explains why they've done this. It was to cut the cost of maintaining their activation servers for CS2.

Come to think of it though unintentionally it's a pretty good marketing move.
Getting CS2 for free could generate a few sales of CS6. Maybe this is something SCS should think about, give away say Vegas 4 or 5 or 6. There's still good mileage to be had from either of those even if only as an audio multitracker. Ialso note a lot of audio devices come with a free copy of Cubase, another opportunity for SCS to get Vegas "out there".

Bob.

Bob,

After effects did not seem to be included in the CS2 download.

Dave T2

Wow. I've been using PS 5.5 forever. lol. Downloading... Hope it works. Thanks for the heads up.

Well, this looks like most likely a case of too good to be true.

After reading some more articles on the Free Adobe Creative Suite 2, it appears that it really isn't intended to be free -- the downloads / serial numbers are only intended for licensed users. Adobe deactivated their license server for the CS2 product line due to some sort of technical and/or obsolescence issue. So, any previous licensees of their CS2 products would have problems reinstalling their software if needed. Adobe decided to give their licensed product users the opportunity to download a copy of their software and provided them a license key that doesn't require internet enabled verification.

Article: Adobe is NOT giving away free CS2 downloads

JDW,

I read that article and understand what they are saying. But if this was the case, why did they provide the software download as well. They could just have provided the activation codes and serials so that only people who already have the software could activate and use them.

I downloaded them and have run Photoshop with no apparent issues.

I think they just didn't realize how hard they would get hit and don't want people who purchased their products to get upset that you can get some of them free. These are really old versions and I am only running it on my XP laptop. I have paid versions on my Windows 7 computers.

Dave T2

Hi Dave,

Here's a link to an Adobe Forum thread on the topic. Here's another post by someone trying to convince Adobe that releasing CS2 for free would be great PR. It appears that Adobe isn't offically saying too much about it one way or other. But, giving away even previous versions of this sort of main stream software does seem rather odd.

Hopefully Adobe will offer up some sort of an offical statement soon.

Jim

Update: Here's another article that states that Adobe has made some sort of offical response.

The installation is asking for a serial number.

Does anyone know, if this a free standalone version, or a free upgrade from a previous version?

Thanks,

Barry,
The serial numbers are posted right there on the web page where you downloaded the files.

Dave,
Am I missing something by not installing Premiere and Audition?

The serial number is on the download page. It installs perfectly, as least on my Windows 7 machine.

As for Adobe making the software and license available, I would have to think that they are quite aware at this point that it's getting downloaded in the wild. That they haven't shut it down or changed the access method speaks volumes, IMHO.

I've always had extraordinary powers of observation, too funny.

Thanks musicvid.

I have never used Audition, but Premiere might just give you another video editing option. I have not installed this version yet, but the CS3 version allows you to render to codecs not normally found in QT, such as 10 and 8 bit uncompressed.

Dave T2

Despite all the mystery and speculation, it's simply a huge marketing coup for Adobe. They're going to sell lots of new units as a result of this "midnight preview", and maybe improve their shrinking market share of video and imaging software.

here is their "official" statement.

Effective December 13, Adobe disabled the activation server for CS2 products and Acrobat 7 because of a technical glitch. These products were released over 7 years ago and do not run on many modern operating systems. But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers. While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers


As many are pointing out on that forum, Adobe has not removed the downloads or the serials, they have not required that you show proof of purchase before downloading, there is not statement saying that only "purchasers" of the software should use these downloads or serials and the curious thing to me is the download address itself includes "entitlement".

I don't think there will be a massive software crackdown from Adobe about this. Everyone has to use their own judgment. I for one have installed Photoshop and look forward to having access to the newer version on my laptop.

Dave T2

Getting CS2 for free could generate a few sales of CS6. Maybe this is something SCS should think about, give away say Vegas 4 or 5 or 6

Adobe won't give you any upgrades after two versions old, so the old versions are pretty much junk for anyone who has them. sony allows you to resell and and non-upgraded version is 100% upgradable. There's nothing stopping all Vegas 4/5 users from giving their stuff away & it can't be upgraded, like here.

But even if it wasn't on purpose, I'm sure someone got a big slap on the wrist and they're thinking "We won't ever do THIS again".


BTW, I don't consider XP obsolete. All their stuff works on XP.

I tried the experiment of opening up the download page on several different PCs with different browsers and i saw the same serial numbers every time.

Chienworks,

The serials are apparently tied to these downloads and allow them to work without online activation.

Dave T2

As an Adobe fikhed, what's the difference between the 'creative suite' and PS-CS2?

I see CS.2 takes back to the era of Win2000. It made me wonder when it wouldn't install into the Program Files (x86) folder. I wonder what other file anomalies we're looking at?

tom

DaveT2 said:
"After effects did not seem to be included in the CS2 download"

You're right, sorry about that. AE is only included in the Production Premium Bundle.

TheHappyFriar said:
"But even if it wasn't on purpose, I'm sure someone got a big slap on the wrist and they're thinking "We won't ever do THIS again"."

I doubt it. It's generated a lot of free publicity at next to no cost.
On top of that anyone whose even a tad devious can have CS6 for free so giving away CS2 for free is pretty trivial.

Just a heads up.
As far as I know you're not going to have much joy out of PPro CS2. Remember you need to pay for 3rd party codecs, I think about all CS2 does out of the box is DV25.
PS is probably all there is of any real use.

Bob.