Longtime Photoshop trainer Dave Cross has posted the results of his experiments opening a PSD file containing new-to-CC features back in Photoshop CS5. (Spoiler alert: Everything works as expected.)
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Longtime Photoshop trainer Dave Cross has posted the results of his experiments opening a PSD file containing new-to-CC features back in Photoshop CS5. (Spoiler alert: Everything works as expected.)
Previous/related:
If you are really content with this, and think by that to serve clients as good as somehow possible, then congratulations!
Yes one could say: What more than fully opening newer files with older version could one possibly expect? Yeah one could, but that was silly.
We don’t even have to wait how the situation looked in 5 years and how much of the CC stuff CS6 could handle then.
No let’s stick in the presence and have a look at what an ex subsciption customer can do who didn’t already own a perpetual license of Photoshop.
What can such a customer do do with a .psd which has a 32 bit raw file with setting embedded and some Illustrator Smart Objects as well? Nothing.
One could not open such a file in any lossless way in Gimp, Pixelmator, Photoline or similar – I doubt they opened at all in most packages.
The compatibility problem isn’t limited to psd but to several other native formats (Indesign, Illustrator and several others)
I wonder if at least the private person John understands, that most people who commented on your Blog in the last weeks clearly want something else. A permanently usable program after a reasonable period of time of subscribing to your service. There’s no alternative offer which an advanced user could take seriously.
That’s all very nice – but that’s only Photoshop. Try doing the same with InDesign (and cheating with idml export does not count). InDesign is NOT backwards compatible at all, so I hope this is not the proposed “solution” for the CC exit barrier.
Other applications should have a backwards compatibility path as well asbjorn, indesign can save to idml for backwards compatibility: http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/save-indesign-files-previous-versions.html
They should, but they don’t always work. IDML and INX have their limitations. And you’ll still have to beg someone to convert Adobe CC files down to CS6 for you (say an agency works on CC and sends you files) unless you’re the guy with CC using CS6 as an exit, lol. But then, in a few years exiting to CS6 won’t even be a viable option since CS6 won’t be supporting future OS indefinitely–just the next Windows and Mac OS. And the farther away CC moves from CS6 over the years the less compatibility you’ll get. So unless you’re squirreling away a version of your current OS (or next) to run in Parallels and you’re not going to be using a lot of the new CC features as they are developed; what we’re really talking about is how long you can delay the hurt, the switch to other products, or the subscription.
Photoshop is good at being backward compatible, so I’m not terribly concerned about it for a few years. The day you finish paying off CS6 you still have a product that is 100% useful and valuable to you. The day you stop paying CC you have 0% value (inoperable software) remaining for your money spent. I don’t think that backward compatibly can fix that issue, though every little bit helps I suppose.
Pete, I believe you skipped over some words in Asbjørns comment…
I was in the process of learning Illustrator and then was going to tackle InDesign when the cloud issue came up so I would like to ask why idml is considered a cheat?
This is somewhat reassuring — however the main problem is that in 5 years Photoshop CS 6 probably won’t even launch on a then-modern mac. It will still be the same issue that we are complaining about: it will be CC or nothing.
I’m no longer using smart objects or anything like that, and I’m also saving a flat tif of every file I work on in photoshop.
Very true. But I plan on continuing to use my CS to its fullest capability, smart objects and all. I’m not going to let Adobe’s CC decision constrain the way I use CS or let it screw with my head anymore. I paid for the full use of CS, and It’s mine to use as long as I can, so I will. And in the coming years when there are other non-rental options for orphaned CS users, lol, whether they are open source or commercial offerings I’ll look ’em over and kick the tires.
As a small business owner, I’ve been working with adobe software from 1992 when I was a student at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Over the years we have been good about saving upgrade version files, in addition to the original file rather then replacing it.
However, right now we are working with our clients to make sure they don’t go over to CC,… as we refuse to even upgrade to CS6 from CS 5.5 at the advice of our IT consultant.
Our main concerns are, working with clients and vendors that use CC and trying to decide on software to migrate all our Adobe files over with edit capabilities in the long term,… very similar to what we did when we dropped QuarkXPress in 2004 (due to price arrogance) and went exclusively to InDesign.
We are looking for ways to replace Adobe Software in our Creative Services Dept. and maintain continuity with our Adobe files.