Yesterday, like many other Mac geek faithful this weekend, I got my hands on a copy of Snow Leopard, the name of Apple's latest operating system upgrade, Mac OS X 10.6. Though I knew it reportedly had few major feature enhancements, all signs online pointed to it being a harmless upgrade. Even comments around Adobe CS3's having issues pointed to clean sailing with CS4. But my experience, so far, has been anything but clean, and it's not exactly sure what caused the issue, or what will be needed to solve it.As you may recall, in May, we had to do a little song and dance with Adobe's tech support team to download the full version of the company's CS4 product. But since then, I've been using the product suite practically every day. In fact, practically every blog post you see here features screenshots or graphics that have gone through CS4. But this one won't, unfortunately, and it's like I am operating with one hand behind my back.
My Photoshop CS4 Forgot I Had Permissions to Use It
The issue is an odd one. When trying to start up any of the CS4 products, be it PhotoShop, Illustrator, In Design, or the others, I am simply told that "Licensing for this product has stopped working". The error encourages a restart, and yet, following restarts (plural), the issue remains - suggesting I tell tech support, which I will, but am not extremely excited about, especially after May's fun.
Illustrator Mocked My Trying to Launch It As Well
I have to assume that the issue has arisen as a result of Snow Leopard clawing its way on to my Mac. After all, Photoshop worked before the install, and doesn't work after, and nothing else changed. So far, online repositories aren't much help, and it's not clear which of the three players is at fault - Apple, Adobe, or me. (It could always be the user's fault). I have seen others say their CS4 apps are working great with Snow Leopard, but mine sure aren't. Maybe it's because they had the retail boxes, and going for the download version is coming back to bite me. I sure hope not.
I sent a note 1-1 to an Adobe rep who wrote me back in May, and look forward to seeing if she responds Monday. I'd be curious to see if this is a "Louis-only" issue, or if this is more widespread, and see why this is happening. Until then, get used to text only, or big juicy screenshot images with no resizing and cropping.