Member Avatar for koch1297

Can I run without problems on my new imac?

What problems will occur?

I am mainly an illustrator and photoshop person.

Thanks.

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Short answer for : CS2 will run on an Intel iMac that still has Apple’s Rosetta translation available (the Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard era), but it runs under emulation — expect reduced speed and occasional glitches with large Illustrator/Photoshop files. If native Intel performance is important, CS3 was the first Creative Suite release distributed as a Universal Binary (native on Intel Macs). (en.wikipedia.org)

How to check and reduce pain: open About This Mac → More Info → System Report → Software → Applications and sort by the “Kind” column to see whether a component is PowerPC or Intel. If CS2 shows PowerPC, you’re using Rosetta on Leopard/ Snow Leopard; that’s the case and were describing. Heavy, multithreaded Photoshop work (very large PSDs, many filters/plugins) is where Rosetta shows the biggest hit — add RAM, use a fast scratch disk, close other apps, and save incrementally. Benchmarks from that transition era show noticeably slower CS2 performance under Rosetta. (macworld.com)

Longer-term reality and options: Rosetta remained through 10.6 but was removed in OS X 10.7 Lion (July 20, 2011), so any Mac upgraded past Snow Leopard won’t run PowerPC-only CS2. Adobe has also retired support for those old installers/activations, so CS2 is effectively unsupported and reinstallable only under limited conditions. Practical choices: keep a Snow Leopard machine or image with Rosetta for legacy work; run the Windows CS2 build inside a Windows VM or Boot Camp on an Intel Mac; or upgrade to a modern, supported release (CS3+ or Creative Cloud) for native performance and security. Back up originals and keep an offline installer/serial if you need to preserve access to old files. (en.wikipedia.org)

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Member Avatar for John A

You can run it (I've never run it personally on a Mac), but due to the Intel processor switchover that occurred a few years ago, Adobe CS2 can't run natively on your Mac, and will have to be emulated using built-in Rosetta technology. This means you'll notice slowdown when running it, and other people have said there are some bugs that occur.

While CS2 will certainly work, if you're serious about running the Adobe suite, your best bet would be to get CS3 for Mac, which supports the Intel processors fully.

Member Avatar for koch1297

I thought that the intel based macs (towers or imacs) just came out in 2007, maybe late 2006.

So.....Rosetta tells the machine that older software is running, but can make it slow...?

When someone said i'll need to buy new software, i thought they meant to at least get into the CS family, but not go all the way to CS3.

Member Avatar for John A

>I thought that the intel based macs (towers or imacs) just came out in 2007,
>maybe late 2006.
The transition to Intel processors began mid 2005, and was completely finished by the end of summer 2006.

>So.....Rosetta tells the machine that older software is running, but can make it slow...?
Sort of. Pre-intel Mac software was coded for the PowerPC processor. These binaries cannot execute natively on a different architecture (Intel), so an emulation layer is necessary. This emulation layer creates a virtual PowerPC processor which in turn executes the PowerPC binary. However, this extra layer slows down overall performance and is more bug-prone.

commented: Very knowledgeable, helpful and courteous. +5
Member Avatar for koch1297

Thanks a lot for your comments.

This is a much better forum that Adobe's!!


Erich

Member Avatar for ZakAdelman

I vote either don't use CS2 or click [command] [S] often.. I was lucky to keep it running on a MacPro for more than 45min at at a time. It can depend on the size of the project though, mine were large PS documents several thousand pixels wide in RGB color.

Member Avatar for linux

Rosetta was eliminated in 10.5, I thought.

Member Avatar for ZakAdelman

You are thinking of the program to run OS9 apps. Rosetta is for running PPC apps on an Intel Mac.

Member Avatar for John A

Word has it that PowerPC code from Leopard will be largely eliminated in the upcoming release of Snow Leopard. Whether this includes Rosetta or not isn't certain, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple ditched it. It's actually kind of disappointing how quickly Apple is trying to drop support for the older PowerPC Macs.

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