Installing Photoshop CS3 on top of CS3 Beta? Beware!
I’ve been using Adobe’s beta version of their new Photoshop CS3 software for the last few months. It expired the other day, so I shelled out for the full retail version. However when I tried to install from the CD, I got this irksome message:
Adobe Photoshop CS3 cannot be installed because it conflicts with:
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Nice! So Photoshop CS3 conflicts with itself. That’s a good start. Righty-ho, I thought – let’s uninstall the CS3 Beta. Naturally I dragged the application to the Trash. WRONG! What you’re supposed to do is use the uninstaller, squirreled away in the Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers/ folder. How obvious.
OK, so I did that – still didn’t install. Turns out the uninstaller does a pretty poor job at removing various stray CS3 files, and the CS3 installer is very intolerant of any CS3-related files it finds on your hard drive – or even on your backup drive, for that matter.
The solution is to remove all those stray CS3-related files. Handily, Adobe has produced a little script, along with an informative PDF file, to help with this. Download it here. Open the PDF file inside the disk image, and follow the instructions therein. I managed to get away with Method 1, without having to run the cleanup script. (Which is a good job, as running the script sounds scary, going by that PDF. Make sure you back up everything on your Mac first if you use the script method!)
Basically I opened these two folders in the Finder:
- /Users/<user_name>/Library/Preferences
- /Library/Application Support/Adobe
…then searched for “CS3” in those folders using the search box at the top right of the Finder window, then dragged the search results to the Trash and emptied the Trash. The CS3 installer on the CD then worked fine, and in ten minutes I was up and running with CS3.
I think the same general approach applies to the Windows version too.
Hope that helps someone! Again, make sure your hard drive’s fully backed up before trying any of this. More info on the subject here, and in this thread.
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May 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Didnt work, I couldnt delete some CS3 files, saying i didnt have sufficient privilages. So I keep getting the same error. I there an image editing program out there as good as photoshop? Im sick and tired of these software issues, its always something.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:09 am
It could be that permissions on those files have been corrupted – try repairing permissions in Disk Utility. Failing that, you could delete them from a shell prompt with “sudo rm …” (making sure you have a backup on CD/DVD first, just in case!). Did you try running Adobe’s cleanup script?
Nothing beats Photoshop in the image editing department unfortunately! (In my opinion anyway.) However, depending on your needs you might be fine with The GIMP – http://www.gimp.org/ – or, if you run Windows in Parallels, Paint Shop Pro – http://www.paintshoppro.com/.