Expert: LizaL - 11/18/2004

Question
Lisa,
I have been using Photoshop 5.5 on my G4 w/OS 9.1 for years. I recently had to upgrade to OSX 10.3 because I bought a Nikon D70 (it's software requires OSX). I found that PS 5.5 will not open the raw files from the camera (it says it can not open them because the files aren't the correct kind). I assume it requires Photoshop CS. My question is, when I get the CS upgrade (OSX), will I have problems since my older full version of PS is in OS 9? Will I end up having a full version of Photoshop in OS X 10.3? Thanks.

Answer
Hi Steve,

Congratulations on the new camera! That's a nice one, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Anyway, about your software -- yes, I can believe that 5.5 won't open raw files, since Camera Raw is a relatively new concept. In fact, that plug-in for Photoshop only came out in early 2003.

But to answer your question about the CS upgrade -- first off, you shouldn't have any problems upgrading from 5.5 to CS. The requirements for CS are OS X, which you now have, and CS says right on the box that it's intended for users of Photoshop 7 and earlier.

You will have a full version of Photoshop, although now it will be CS -- and you'll be able to open anything, including your old images, with the new CS version of Photoshop, since CS is backwards-compatible with older versions of Photoshop.

It doesn't matter if you used to run Photoshop 5.5 in OS 9. It's not like Photoshop 5.5 was resident "in" OS 9, if you know what I mean. It took OS 9 to make it run, but now that you have a stronger, newer OS, you can run a stronger, newer version of Photoshop. You'll wind up with just one version of Photoshop, version CS, running under OS X.

Photoshop CS is a great, great upgrade and it's well worth the money and the time required to install it (which is virtually minutes). I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and also the ability to use the Camera Raw feature.

Hope this helps, and if any of this is unclear or you need to ask anything else, please don't hesitate to post back!

Lisa