Photoshop CC 2015

If you're like me and subscribe to Adobe Create Cloud applications, specifically Photoshop CC iterations, you will notice each time you upgrade to a new version Adobe removes the older versions of CC apps, not just for Photoshop but other common apps, eg. Illustrator, InDesign, etc.

If you want to keep the old copies you need to restore them from backups, but you also have to check for other folders associated with those apps, namely the /Library/Applications/Adobe folder, as the install program for the upgrade removes the content of the app's folder so the app won't open let alone work.

I learned this with Photoshop CC 2015.5 which removed CC 2015, which I restored but then it wouldn't open telling me to uninstall and reinstall the app. If you're like me, however, and have Time Machine, you can go back before the installation of PS CC 2015.5 and restore the app and libray folder contents for PS CC 2015.

Anyway, the story is that I have all three versions of Photoshop CC, 2014, 2015 and 2015.5, but I have to always remember to restore them after upgrading Photoshop CC. I also still have Photoshop CS versions going back to CS3 but then Adobe doesn't remove them since you own them.

I don't worry about the older versions of the other apps Adobe's upgrade removes because I only use the latest version. Adobe overwrites Lightroom CC updates but not version upgrades so you can keep Lightroom 2, 3, 4 and 5 if you want.

Why keep older versions? I like to use the different versions for different work, so rather than switching catalogs in one app, I can run multiple versions, even simultaneously, to focus on that specific work. I also do this with Dreamweaver for working on different groups of Web pages, and don't have to keep switching groups of files.

There is an advantage to have Apple's Time Machine, although I can't keep it working past 6 months to a year before it has problems and I have to erase the HD and start over. But that's often far enough to recover files.