Can CS3 and CS4 applications be installed on the same computer?

April 26, 2009 2:55 PM

Can Adobe CS3 and CS4 programs coexist on the same mac and with different licenses?

I currently have CS3 design premium installed on my mac. I just purchased CS4 design standard and am going to install it soon.

Will there be potential conflicts with keeping Dreamweaver CS3 and Flash CS3 on my mac?

Will having one license for the CS3 applications and an entirely different license for the CS4 apps cause any issues?

posted by mtphoto to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Response by poster: Ideally, this would be the end result:

Photoshop CS4
Bridge CS4
Illustrator CS4
InDesign CS4
Dreamweaver CS3
Flash CS3

If this isn't possible, I'm ok with just the new CS4 suite that I've purchased.
posted by mtphoto at 2:59 PM on April 26, 2009

FWIW, CS2 and CS3 coexist on my box- but it may be worth contacting adobe and asking in one of their support forums.
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:03 PM on April 26, 2009

Best answer: At work, I currently have:

Photoshop CS4
Bridge CS4
Illustrator CS4
InDesign CS3
Dreamweaver CS4
Flash CS4

installed and running on the same Mac without a hitch. Don't see why it would be any different for the programs/versions you need.
posted by DulcineaX at 3:31 PM on April 26, 2009

Our machines at work have everything from CS through CS4 installed. You may have some issues with default file handlers but that's easy enough to fix.
posted by nathan_teske at 4:34 PM on April 26, 2009

My experience:

I have both coexisting on my Mac thanks to Bootcamp.

CS3 Production Suite from my recent Windows machine on the XP side, and the new CS4 version for Mac on OSX. I use these mainly for photography and a bit of video - and was alarmed to learn that some of my plugins only work on windows. Problem solved.

So, two versions, two virtual machines. And Bootcamp is not that ornery.
posted by seawallrunner at 5:06 PM on April 26, 2009

Best answer: At work, we have both Macs and PCs and we have not uninstalled any of our previous versions of Creative Suite when we've added a new one (we sometimes have to go back a version or two for our archived files). So we currently have CS2 Design Premium, CS3 Design Premium and CS4 Design Premium running on the same machines and there have been no glitches. The only thing that you don't get to keep are previous versions of Acrobat.
posted by wabbittwax at 5:45 PM on April 26, 2009