WARNING!! Adobe Photoshop CS3 to CS4 on OS X

I just wasted much of my Saturday morning fighting with the brain damaged Adobe CS4 installer. Perhaps this post will save others some aggravation. I had Adobe Photoshop CS3 installed on my OS X 10.5 MacBook Pro. I got the CS4 update. Please be aware this is for Mac OS X only. I don’t know the traps the CS4 installer sets on windows.

• I did the install from the DVD. All seemed OK, except the installation process did not have the option to simply upgrade CS3 to CS4 – which is what I wanted to do. I did not want 2 versions of Photoshop on my system.
• After installing CS4, I tried it and it ran OK.  I ran the updater and it downloaded some new files OK. Next step, remove CS3
• On the older CS3, the readme pdf file gave these instructions for uninstalling: DO NOT drag applications to the trash to uninstall them. To safely uninstall on Mac OS X, double-click the product installer in Applications\Utilities\Adobe Installers. Authenticate as an administrator, then select Remove Components and follow the on-screen instructions.
• I did the above. It took a long, long time but finished OK.
• Next, I ran Photoshop again and got this message:
  

  adobe cs4 error

  Here’s the message in text so that a search might reveal this post. “One or more files in the Adobe Application Support folder, necessary for running Photoshop, are missing. Please run the Photoshop installer re-install Photoshop.” Not good. I followed the instructions an reinstalled from the DVD.

• After reinstalling, I got the same message. Very NOT GOOD.
• A search on Adobe’s web site returned no useful information.
• A web search gave some hints: The error message is referring to directory /Library/Application Support/Adobe    Note this is different from ~/Library
• There were over 17 thousand files in various folders inside /Library/Application Support/Adobe  Uh Oh
• After taking a break to eat, I decided to use Apple’s Time Machine to restore /Library/Application Support/Adobe  to what it was yesterday. There was 650 megabytes in 17,700 files. Time Machine did this easily. You are using Time Machine, aren’t you?
• Once this completed, I reinstalled CS4 Photoshop from the DVD. It worked!! No errors.

I hope this is of use to others.

Discover, iBank Woes and a Fix

If you’re using iBank financial software and have a Discover card which was assigned a new card number, you may no longer be able to download transactions. This happened to me. Here is the fix:

• Select the Discover account
• On the top menu, click “Account”
• Select “Disable Account Access”
• On the top menu, click “Account”
• Select “Setup Account Access”
• Enter your Discover user id and password
• Click Download Transactions
• If all is well, your transactions will download to iBank

I had a bizzare transaction download called “Transfer of Balance”. To get my accout right, I entered a transaction for this amount with the sign reversed and my iBank Discover account is now correct.

Discover, this was a pain in the a**. You did not post iBank instructions, only Quicken and MS Money. I was able to figure out what to do after reading those. Discover, not everyone is stuck with a Windows pc. Don’t “diss” your Mac customers.X

Resize Multiple Images in OS X Preview

Usingmac.com had a useful tip: How to resize multiple images using Preview. I tried it, it does work on Leopard. This seems like a great way to create a bunch of thumbnails. Be careful, though, when you save the resized images. It overwrites them. I copied the images I wanted to resize to a new folder, then resized them. Keeps my original images as is.

1. Open images to be resized in Preview
2. Select images you want to resize.
3. On the Preview menu Tools -> Adjust size.
4. File -> Save All  The images are overwritten.

Next Apple OS is called Snow Leopard

Link to Apple’s Snow Leopard page.

Updated 10 June 2008: Here’s a brief story on Snow Leopard.

I saw something the other day (sorry, no link) saying that the next version of OS X, 10.6, will be called Snow Leopard. What happens when Apple runs out of big cat names?

Mint and iBank Financial Software for OSX

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about my search for personal financial software for my Macintosh.

Mint, a financial web site, works with any OS. I’m using this site once a week or so to get an overview of where I’m spending. My family income is easy, I have a job and so does Gary. I do like this site and I recommend you check it out. It’s free. Now they are adding investment accounts. I’m in the beta program, I’ve used it all of one time so far. There is a great view which lets you see performance of your investments vs. the Dow or S&P or Nasdaq as a multicolored line chart. Extremely cool.

iBank, an OSX financial program. This is my electronic checkbook and credit card account tracker. It can import Quiken .qif files, which my bank and cc card web sites can produce and download. This program works well, worth the $60. It can save your data in an encrypted form (do this!, especially if you use a laptop) requiring a password to open the datastore. The UI is pretty and very Mac-like. iBank has an investment account piece which I have not been able to figure out, but that’s not what I’m using it for. If you use OSX and have had problems with Quicken for Mac, try iBank. I think there’s a limited free trial.