I have CS 4 and I think I will be jumping from Snowy to ML. I seem to find mixed reviews whether CS 4 will work well with ML. I also cannot decifer from the blogs I have read whether upgrading to CS 5 is a good idea. Anything to avoid Adobe Cloud usage fees.

I can't speak about CS apps other than Photoshop, and I never used CS 4, upgrading from CS 3 to CS 5. I can say, however, that PS CS 5 works well in Yosemite so it should also work in Mountain Lion.

For completeness sake, CS3 (Photoshop, Illustrator) too works well under Yosemite (requires Apple’s Java 6). I suspect it’ll run under ML as well.

I'm not a big fan of Adobe. I don't know whether to buy one of the few boxed CS5 upgrades that are still floating around because they change their upgrade policies, presently I believe it is two versions back. They may consider 5.5 the latest upgrade since it was classified as an upgrade from 5.0, although the only updates were to photoshop and illustrator and you had to pay for it. I have CS4. I can buy the upgrade and leave it in the box. Anyone vote in favor?

also an issue we ran into recently, if you install creative cloud, it infects the CS6 licensing with CC licensing and you will have problems with previously installed products (CS5/6) when your cloud subscription expires. (have fun with the wipe and reinstall of the OS to purge CC's licensing from jamming up CS6... I just reimaged the machines from a pre-CC image)

I would think that any purchase decision depends on (your need of) the additional functionality of CS5.5 you’ll get over CS4. Next would be the price. But once you buy it, why would you leave it in the box?

That brings up another thing I have found unclear. What are the differences between cs4and cs5? It looks like one is 32 bit and one is 64bit. That is all I can find, so will that make a speed difference in larger file sizes or even the ability to handle them? It's why I originally was thinking going from snowy to mountain lion would be a problem, but it seems I was wrong about needing that compatibility.

To alternaut's comment, again, what is the difference between the two versions? I don't want to go to cs6 ever for all the reasons stated above. Apparently there is no problem yet. I did read an old string on the Adobe website where people where complaining about certain errors in cs4 and without hesitation told to upgrade, but I guess a lot of manufacturers do that.

Would be good to have it 'in my pocket' before you can't get it at all. So far, I have read here that 3 runs under Yosemite and 5 runs under Yosemite. Doesn't mean that there won't be a problem with 4 that doesn't show up between mountain lion and Yosemite although it may take some time. Maybe some code that was added in 4 and removed in 5 because a problem showed up. My 4 does have an issue hours after I am using it but it is still open asking me to quit because a photoshop error occurred.

The jump to 64-bit means that CS5 can directly access a lot more RAM. If you have more than 4 GB of RAM in your computer, editing is faster, especially with large files.

Photoshop CS5 added a host of new tools for automated selection, the spot healing brush actually works, and there are new options for content-aware fill that are quite nice.

Do you know if 5.5 was actually a fix or just an upgrade to photoshop and illustrator? it was a paid upgrade and the accusations were flying that 5.0 was actually a beta.

So, the 2012 13" refurb I bought my friend is running lion. I just spoke to Apple and it was the reps opinion that although she thought mountain lion is a bit more stable with less updates, she feels that lion has better compatibility with Adobe products. What say team FTM?

if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If CS4 is mainly what you need it to work well with, and lion isn't causing you other problems, stick with it.

Because of a topic change, slolerner’s response to post 34604, and the responses to it were detached and moved into a new thread: Lion on a USB stick.