Free Adobe Photoshop CS2, Acrobat Pro 8, Creative Studio 2, and more!
January 12, 2013 34
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Ever think the day would come when you would see Photoshop — and other high-value Adobe products — as freebies? Yeah, well, me neither. In what can only be termed as a strange rarity, Adobe has put up a page on their website that allows everyone to download the following Adobe programs for free:
- Adobe Creative Studio 2
- Acrobat 3D 1.0 for Windows
- Acrobat Standard 7.0
- Acrobat Pro 8.0
- Audition 3.0
- GoLive CS2
- Illustrator CS2
- InCopy CS2
- InDesign CS2
- Photoshop CS2
- Photoshop Elements 4.0/5.0
- Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0
Sure the freebies may be of old versions, but even old versions of software like Photoshop and Acrobat Pro are still useable and better than many rivals.
That said, it should be noted these freebies are a bit controversial.
You see the page on Adobe’s website that has the download links and serial keys is a public page accessible by anyone (i.e. no access restrictions) and it does not mention any special preconditions, e.g. it does not say that these downloads are only for a select group or people. This seemingly indicates that everyone can rightfully grab the freebies. However, there was a post made on Adobe forums (not by an official Adobe representative, just a forums member) stating that Adobe’s official stance is that the downloads found on the above-mentioned page are only for people who bought the product in the past.
As far as I know, Adobe itself has yet to come out and issue an official statement about the freebies and, interestingly enough, the forum post I mention above has now been deleted. So it isn’t entirely clear how legitimate or illegitimate the freebies are. However, they are available directly from Adobe so… yeah, grab ‘em while you can (at your own risk, of course).
Hit up the link below to find download links and serial keys for all of the above-mentioned software. All of the programs are available for Windows and most are available for Mac OS X, too. Simply download the programs, install them, and activate them with the provided serial keys.
Adobe CS2 software download page
[Thanks Mary!]
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When this was first announced, you needed an Adobe account to download. Free registration. The registration server was overwhelmed and stayed down for almost an entire day. When the registration link came back online, it linked directly to the download and registration keys.
Here is one of the original sites that announced this giveaway.
http://fstoppers.com/have-an-older-computer-download-adobe-cs2-premium-plus-free?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=
This is what I found on one of the pages of ADOBE…(just an FYI)
Update on CS2 and Acrobat 7 Activation Servers
POSTED BY ADOBE CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS IN CREATIVES, DIGITAL MEDIA
Effective December 13, Adobe disabled the activation server for CS2 products and Acrobat 7 because of a technical glitch. These products were released over 7 years ago and do not run on many modern operating systems. But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers. While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers.
@AT: Yeah, I read about that on ArsTechnica I believe.
@PThakkar: Interesting. You see to me that is not say “don’t download this, this isn’t for you”. That is saying “we did it for X reason”. No where does that legitimize or un-legitimize the downloads. But that is just my opinion.
I DL and installed PS2 and it works just fine on win7 x64
Almost everyone i know downloaded it! But i’m happy with the lil freewares i got :)
Almost everyone i know downloaded it! But i’m happy with the lil freewares i got, they do there
job well. :)
For those not too familiar with their products (cough, me) and tempted to download the lot. be sure to avoid the Apple DLs.
Does anyone know what the total DL size of all the windows programs amount to (for those of us that have DL limits on our internet plans) ?
Does anyone have advice as to which ones we would never need, and should avoid downloading ?
PS here is a link to Gizmo’s page on it -
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/get-adobe-cs2-suite-free-not-officially.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmosbest+%28Gizmo%27s+Best-ever+Freeware%29
Someone there raised a similar point (to my ‘Help us know what to DL, and what not to DL’)
He was only asking about one of the files, as he was probably familiar with the other programs.
No one jumping in to help ? ? ?
Well let me set an example for you’se
ADBEAudition_Loopology.7z is 4.2GB
So you may care to leave that to last.
Meanwhile I will Google to see what it is, and whether I need it
This is exactly what I need to keep my old G5 Mac going. Had really old copies of pre-CS era Photoshop and Illustrator. CS2 works well with 10.5.8, the maximum OS I can run on the PPC architecture.
Thanks!
I do not know why everyone keeps reposting this ….Free copies of Adobe master suite and Adobe Photoshop CS2. It is all over the web that Abobe IS NOT GIVING AWAY FREE COPIES OF THIS, see here ;;;;
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/01/07/download-adobe-cs2-applications-for-free/
NOW , had the author of this article done his homework and research before posting this article he/she would have found this out.
Those of you downloading this, you will find that the program will take the serial and will install but immediately upon first use it is going to tell you that it is an invalid copy and immediately shut down. So if you want to waste your time with this , be my guest.
@Ed: Invalid copies, even though it is Adobe itself giving them out?!?
@Mike:
Mike, read the article (the link in my previous post) , Adobe IS NOT giving out free copies of CS2. Are people REALLY that gullible to believe that Adobe would give away such an expensive suite for anyone who wants it? And give EVERYONE the same serial number much less. C’mon people!
Unless someone directly from Adobe says it is so, or it is posted DIRECTLY on the Adobe site this is NOT free.
This is a DIRECT WORD FOR WORD quote from Betanews.com ………
“Adobe’s Dov Isaacs posted a forum message saying that the company was “absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!” Apparently the CS2 activation servers are being terminated, and these builds and serial numbers are intended for existing licence holders to use as an alternative”
Which means NEW USERS cannot register CS2 as their own. If you DO NOT ALREADY OWN A REGISTERED COPY OF CS2 THE SERIALS WILL NOT WORK. End of story.
I guess this was a cute way for the author to drive traffic to this site ……… nice work but your also gonna piss a lot of people off.
Ed- Sure, why not? Old versions of a program are often used as promotions to get new users to try it,and these are over five years old- a long time in software generations. The hope,of course, is that once you’ve used it, you’ll want the additional features and capabilities of the current version and go on to buy it. It works too. GOTD frequently has promos of a program one or two versions behind the current one. I’ve bought several after trying them out. Granted,from their botched response, Adobe’s not that savvy-but they could have been. Even so, they’ve garnered a load of publicity.
@ds5929:
ds – Have you installed and used the software? I have and it does not work, the program terminates immediately after first use telling you that the copy is invalid.
Besides that ….. how many people REALLY have the $999.00 (U.S.) to lay out for a copy of Photoshop, JUST photoshop, $1,900.00 for the current version of Master Suite.
Unless your a school student. I bought CS5.5 on clearance from the school bookstore for $329, and got a free upgrade to CS6. The ironic thing is that I still have to install it.
works fine for me
@Ed: Hmm, I’ve downloaded, installed and successfully registered Elements and Acrobat (the rest I’m not capable of using), and they perform as they should. Am I missing something?
I try to avoid Adobe products whenever possible. Downloading 7 year-old products that inevitably include security flaws doesn’t sound too appealing even without the Adobe label.
@Ed: As the activation servers are down it will only work with serials now, and those are officially from Adobe and will never stop working, as the algorithm is in the setup-files you downloaded.
If you can’t get it to work it’s just an ID 10T error.
Also, if you obtained the Software from Adobe, they grant you a non-exclusive license. ;)
Best ever, thank you, I have been looking for a PDF editor this is my best gift.
@Ed: You wrote: “Those of you downloading this, you will find that the program will take the serial and will install but immediately upon first use it is going to tell you that it is an invalid copy and immediately shut down. So if you want to waste your time with this , be my guest.”
I can affirm that you are correct, because I went through the very long download and complicated install procedure (3 CDs plus), only to find that after all that trouble the program (Photoshop CS2) opened and immediately froze with an invalid serial number message. I had to then go through the long procedure of uninstalling and deleting all the stuff left over from the install. :(
On the plus side, Adobe Acrobat 8 and Photoshop Elements 5 installed and work fine. :) So it was a very nice net gain.
@Ed: Sorry, Ed, but you are one of the few people I have read of who has had an issue–most comments I read here and elsewhere have the software working just fine.
F-R-E-E Not an ADBE like action: free software. Interesting, bold and appreciated. Will have to lower ADBE on the cast iron list.
Caution when someone leaves a giant gift horse at your door step. Is this a veiled signal that an entirely new winOS is in the wind? (Notice OS requirements on download page.)
I still have almost 20 PC’s running XP, so that concerns little. The one win7 PC runs in virtual XP. One runs win3.1 and one Sony employs winME (Millions of Errors). And a ChromeBook that doesn’t run much of anything; it IS cute, tho.
Note: some of the free ADBE programs have multi-GB downloads…