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Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Mac 11.0.1 Create powerful images with the professional standard Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 software provides improved access to its unrivaled power through a more intuitive user experience, greater editing freedom, and significant productivity enhancements.

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If you've installed a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4 on one of your company's Mac computers, the program may display an error message when you try to launch it, stating that its licensing or serial number has expired or that you're using an invalid serial number. You're not alone in your predicament -- or your frustration -- especially if you see this error message the first time you try to start up the program after you install it. How you handle this problem depends on whether your serial number actually has expired, or if you're seeing interference from a pre-release trial or pre-purchase demo version of the software.

Expired Serial Number

Open the Apple menu and choose 'System Preferences.' Select the 'Date and Time' preference pane and change your computer's clock date to January 1, 2006. This workaround overcomes the Catch 22 that arises because you must launch the software to remove the old serial number, but the expired serial number prevents you from launching the software. You can leave the time set to the correct value.

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Start Adobe Photoshop CS4. Open the 'Help' menu and choose 'Deactivate.' On the deactivation screen, activate the check box for 'Erase This Serial Number' and click on the 'Deactivate' button. Retail serial numbers for standalone copies of Adobe Photoshop or the Adobe Creative Suite don't expire, but demonstration copies and public beta-test or pre-release versions use licensing with short-term serial numbers.

Reopen System Preferences and select the 'Date and Time' preference pane. Reset your computer clock to the correct date.

Start Adobe Photoshop. When the program requests a valid serial number partway through the startup process, enter the serial number for a retail version of the software with no expiration date on its license. If you own a license for Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3, you can use an upgrade serial number. Because Photoshop CS4 no longer represents the shipping version of the product, you can't obtain it from Adobe Systems. If you didn't purchase a Photoshop CS4 license during the shipping lifespan of the product, you may be able to find a sealed or transferable copy on an online auction site.

Interference from Pre-Release or Demo Software

Open your Application folder and navigate to the Adobe Photoshop CS4 folder. Inside it, locate the Uninstall Adobe Photoshop CS4 item and double-click on it to remove Photoshop from your system.

Open a Finder window and navigate to the Library folder at its main level. Within that folder, locate the Application Support folder and open the Adobe folder inside it. 'Shift'-click on the 'Adobe PCD,' 'Caps' and 'Backup' folders and press 'Cmd-Delete' to move them to the Trash.

Insert your Adobe Photoshop CS4 installation disc and double-click on its installer file, or locate and double-click on your downloaded installer file for the program. Follow the installation instructions. When you're prompted for a serial number, enter the number on your disc box or from the purchase-confirmation email message you received from Adobe Systems.

Tips

• In some cases, customers who participated in beta testing or who evaluated pre-release versions of Adobe CS4 software have trouble installing the retail product and activating it with a valid serial number. In these cases, traces of the test or evaluation software versions remain on the customers' computers, forcing them to use workarounds to get their products properly licensed and running. Most commonly, these customers must uninstall the retail version of the software and remove specific folders created by the installer, then reinstall the application. See Section 2 for this procedure.
• You can't reinstall a demonstration version of Adobe Photoshop CS4 after the 30-day evaluation period ends. To turn a demo into a working, licensed copy, enter a valid purchased serial number.
• If neither resetting your system clock and entering a valid serial number nor reinstalling Photoshop CS4 resolves the 'expired-license' problem with your copy of the program, contact Adobe Systems (see Resources).

Warning

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• Don't reset your computer clock to try to extend Adobe's 30-day demonstration software periods. If you do, Adobe's licensing provisions will deactivate the demo regardless of how much time remains before it expires.

About the Author

Elizabeth Mott has been a writer since 1983. Mott has extensive experience writing advertising copy for everything from kitchen appliances and financial services to education and tourism. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from Indiana State University.

Photo Credits

• Oli Scarff/Getty Images News/Getty Images

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Uninstall Adobe Cs4 For Mac

The Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium package is built for Web-page designers, animators, and graphics pros. Its key components include the updated Dreamweaver and Fireworks for dynamic Web design, Photoshop and Illustrator for pixel and vector graphics, Flash for animation, and Soundbooth to tweak audio. Acrobat Professional 9, which now integrates Flash content, is also here.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium costs $ 1,699 (or between $599 to $799 to upgrade). The charts below detail the contents of and pricing for this and other CS4 suites; please click on the images of individual applications to learn what's new inside each of them. If you can afford this package, then choose it over the $999 Web Standard collection that offers only Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash, excluding Photoshop and Illustrator. If you need more tools for print design beyond PDFs, then check out the Design Standard or Premium editions that include InDesign.

The release of Adobe Creative Suite 3 in 2007 was the first to incorporate former properties from Macromedia, such as Flash. With Creative Suite 4, Adobe has unified the interfaces of all the applications for a more seamless experience. Workspace adjustments to CS4 include panels that are more nimble than its predecessor's, and handy pull-down menus with preset styles that enable you to shift among workspace layouts quickly.

Setup and interface
The Web abounds with complaints about Adobe's installer and updater, and most are justified. Every Windows application installer suggests you close any running applications, but you can usually ignore it, and 99 percent of the time everything works out fine. Adobe forces you to close your browser and all Microsoft Office applications, because many of the programs in the suite--primarily Acrobat--spread octopus-like tentacles throughout your working environment. That's pretty appalling in and of itself, but in addition to wasting a large chunk of time installing, you can't do anything else but play Solitaire while it's happening. And as before with the updater, you'll get to relive this delightful close-your-apps-or-else experience on a regular basis. Plus, the installation 'progress' bar bears no relation to reality whatsoever, with its two steps forward and one step back movement.

Unfortunately, it took us nearly 2 hours to install the Adobe Master Collection CS4 on Windows Vista and XP machines. (We didn't test CS4 thoroughly on a Mac.) That's still less time than with CS3, and installing the much smaller Web Premium will likely take less time. Adobe's custom installation still lets you pick and choose which components to embrace or reject, but there's no mechanism for migrating your settings and all your custom tools from CS3 and earlier.

To install Creative Suite 4 Web Premium, Windows users need at least Windows XP SP2 or Vista, with a 2GHz-or-faster processor. The necessary available disk space is 9.1GB (and will be perhaps more during installation). Mac users will need a PowerPC G5 or Intel-based machine with at least OS X v10.4.11, as well as 1GB of RAM and 11.2GB of available disk space. For both Windows and Macs, installation comes via a DVD. The display must be 1,280x900, with 32-bit video card and 16MB of VRAM. Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0 compatibility may also be necessary. These system requirements are less stringent than for those suites involving video, such as Production Premium and the Master Collection.

Features
If you rely on Adobe software for digital animation, then CS4 is worth the plunge, more so than CS3 was. Flash takes a big leap forward by slashing the steps required to build animation. Dreamweaver beefs up tools for CSS sites and feels more stable than its predecessors. It's easier to make round trips among the applications, such as by exporting Fireworks designs as CSS, then bringing them into Dreamweaver. There's not much to wow users of Photoshop who don't work with 3D content, but Illustrator finally manages multipage documents. Soundbooth converts recorded speech into text. There's greater integration from one application to the next, with support for the latest formats for Web sites and mobile phones, as well as PDFs and desktop Adobe AIR applications. See the charts below for reviews of individual applications and the other CS4 suites.

Service and support
We almost hate to rate Adobe's tech support as excellent because of the extreme expense of live, personalized help from the company. However, the software industry has been moving away from free customized assistance for years. At least Getting Started help for installation issues and other speed bumps lasts for 90 days. Adobe's comprehensive, self-serve options include embedded and online look-ups, tutorials, and excellent videos. Also, the company has expanded its help-yourself and peer support online. The new Adobe Support Portal requires an Adobe log-in and password. Newbies would be wise to get up to speed with the interactive tutorials and maybe even third-party books and Web sites. Web-based forums with other users, as well as the Community Support in beta testing, may be the best bargain for getting hands-on advice.