What's the oldest version of Photoshop that works with Leopard?

June 9, 2008 11:29 PM

I use 10.5.2 and need Photoshop a few times a year. I went to school for design, so I'm annoyingly competent with PS and depend on some of the more 'pro' features, like CMYK (which LE or Elements lacks, I think) and Channel Editing (which Pixelmator seems to lack).

Really, I'm kind of old school, and don't use much of the new crap on offer. I happily ran 6.0 until a year or so again, and it was fast as HELL and had everything I needed.

I guess I'm looking for an old school version of PS that I can get used for not much money and get by.

posted by tremspeed to computers & internet (8 comments total)

'a year or so again' makes alot of sense. sorry.
posted by tremspeed at 11:30 PM on June 9, 2008

if you're on an Intel Mac, then anything that's not CS3 will have to run via the Rosetta translation layer thing, which is a pretty sizable performance hit.

Other than that, I believe Leopard (or possibly Tiger) ditched Classic mode, so it would have to be OS X-native.

With that knowledge, paired with this handy chart of Photoshop releases, I think the oldest Photoshop Leopard will run is Photoshop 7, but a cursory google says that they don't get along.

Looks like Photoshop CS is our winner.
posted by heeeraldo at 12:08 AM on June 10, 2008

yeah, i'm on an intel macbook pro. hmm.

thanks tho!
posted by tremspeed at 12:16 AM on June 10, 2008

I was just about to suggest Photoshop 7. I had that for the PC and it was the first version of Photoshop I ever used, although I have no idea what systems it runs on. It's just an edition of Photoshop that was good enough to get me through college.

There are a crazy amount of features that I would miss now if I downgraded from CS3 though which is worth thinking about, this release has been by far the best release ever.
posted by stackhaus23 at 12:35 AM on June 10, 2008

you might want to try seashore. its got a great price. free. open source... might fit your casual use.. looks like it does channel editing...
posted by m o q s h a at 3:41 AM on June 10, 2008

I believe you can "unlock" many of the regular Photoshop features in Photoshop Elements, with macros. I haven't done it myself, but keep meaning to because I particularly miss the curves editor. A quick google should help you out, check out these two links for examples.
posted by Joh at 10:13 AM on June 10, 2008

I'm still stuck on Tiger, but I use Photoshop 7. It's the first OSX native version; 6 and before won't run natively. I haven't had any issues with it.
posted by azpenguin at 10:19 AM on June 10, 2008

I couldn't get PS 7.0 to run after I upgraded to Leopard (i.e., 10.5).
posted by timeistight at 3:54 PM on June 10, 2008