In a surprising move, Adobe has released an older version of some of their most popular products as freeware. The version which can be now downloaded from Adobe’s website free of cost is Creative Suite 2 and includes Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2 and more. This is great news for those who couldn’t afford to shell out hundreds of dollars for an image editing application, and is definitely bad news for GIMP and the numerous other free Photoshop clones.
Adobe Creative Suite 2 was released in 2005 and is dated compared to the most recent version CS6, but it’s still a powerful piece of software and is by no means inferior.
To download them, go to this page, signup for a free Adobe account, if you don’t have one already and download the applications of your choice. The serial numbers for each application are provided on the download page. You can download the entire CS2 Suite or individual applications.
Along with the ever-popular Photoshop CS2 there are an array of applications such as Premiere Pro CS2, Audition 3.0, Acrobat Pro 8.0 etc, all available for free. The complete list of applications that have been made free are:
- Adobe Creative Suite CS2 (Standard) – contains Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Photoshop
- Acrobat 3D 1.0 (Windows) – Create PDF files with embedded 3D images from CAD programs
- Acrobat Standard 7.0 – Create PDF files
- Acrobat Pro 8.0 – PDF converter and editor
- Audition 3.0 - Audio recording and production software
- GoLive CS2 - WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site management application
- Illustrator CS2 - Vector graphics editor
- InCopy CS2 - Word processing software
- InDesign CS2 - Desktop publishing software
- Photoshop CS2 – Arguably the best photo editing software
- Photoshop Elements 4.0/5.0 – Limited feature photo editing software
- Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 – Professional video editing software
Though this story is being widely reported, there's no press release yet from Adobe themselves. These install files and serials were originally released for existing owners of the CS2 suite to enable them to continue using the product after the license servers had been retired, but has created a loophole whereby anyone can download a copy. The legality of using this release commercially without an original CS2 license has yet to be verified by Adobe.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.maxunderground.com/archives/18130_adobe_release_creative_suite_2_for_free.html
Thanks a lot for this info. Very useful :)
ReplyDelete@Adi: That's right. Adobe made these available so that existing users can install CS2 products without the activation server. But even after the news was reported and brought to the notice of Adobe, they haven't disabled the downloads. In fact, it was reported that Adobe now made the page publicly available without requiring sign-up (haven't verified it). Maybe they are enjoying the free press and good PR?
ReplyDeleteOf course, there is still no word about commercial use, but I guess personal use is OK. And this is awesome.
I wonder how many dumped GIMP from their system?
I didn't have to sign up to download.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Adobe's official line of 'only for existing users' is to cover them in case an existing user doesn't like the idea of something he paid for, even if it was years ago, now being given away. There are plenty of lawyers in America who would be willing to sue Adobe for the 'emotional distress' the giveaway has caused their client.