Adobe killed my Photoshop Elements, insists I upgrade. Grrr

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been using Photoshop Elements for a long time, first Elements 8 and since 2016, Elements 14.

I know, I know, it’s not as good as real Photoshop or Lightroom or any number of other programs. But it does what I need to do, I’ve paid for it, I’m retired and don’t use it regularly for work any more, and I don’t want to learn something new.

A month or so ago, I started getting a message saying that the number of installations exceeded the license, and asking me for a legit serial number. It had been installed on my desktop until I retired three years ago, but at that time I uninstalled it and reinstalled it on my laptop. (I may not have deactivated the first instance at that time.) But it is now only on the laptop, and even if I didn’t deactivate the first install, it should allow two non-simultaneous installations. I haven’t changed anything on the laptop for years, so I don’t know why this message came up now.

When I tried giving it the current correct serial number, copied from my account on the Adobe website, it didn’t accept it. It let me continue using it for about 30 days, but since then I can’t get into the program at all.

I tried calling Adobe, but the agent said my only option is to buy an upgrade to Elements 2024, for which they offered me a $20 discount off the regular $100 price. (He said something about deactivating, and the version no longer being supported, but I couldn’t understand his heavy Indian accent.)

Did I do something wrong, or does Adobe summarily kill paid-for apps after support ends? Is there anything I can do to reactivate it without upgrading?

Please don’t bother recommending another program (yet). My preference is to get the one I have working, if possible, and if not, $80 won’t break me, so I may bite the bullet. If I end up being pissed off enough at Adobe to consider another program, I’ll ask for advice then.

Thanks.

2

Interesting. I’m still using Elements 14. They keep popping up an “upgrade now” message almost every time the program starts before it lets me edit. Could someone have gotten your serial number and then used it on other computers?

3

In my experience with them, Adobe support sucks but they can eventually be generous if you just keep asking and asking and pestering and pestering. If the calling is hard to understand, try email or chat support instead (if they still offer that). Some agents won’t help you, but keep asking to escalate to their manager, and their manager’s manager, and so forth and so on, until you get somebody who can fix the license situation for you.

You just have to cost them more in support labor time and be clear that you didn’t do any further installs, maybe it’s a bug in their activation system, etc.

Just keep going, being firm but polite, and I bet eventually someone will cave.

Or, you know, just pirate a more recent version. They won’t care.

4

It’s absurd that you should have to apply a crack to perfectly legitimately use a program that you have a perfectly legitimate license for because of bugs and lack of support on their end. Not that I would never do it, especially if I already paid for the program, but at some point I would just reason, fuck them— why perpetuate their ecosystem, and just use GIMP.

5

You could always try looking for Elements in µTorrent. I used to get obsolete apps that way, but it’s usually more trouble than it’s worth because the crack codes don’t always work, or the instructions to use them are unclear.

6

I wonder, do you get the nagging popup if you use Elements when you’re offline? If so, there’s probably a way of blocking the app from having network access via a firewall setting.

7

That’s a good idea, and I’ll try it, but since the period during which I could still access the program despite the popup has passed, I suspect it’s permanently locked out now, with or without a connection.

8

About once a week, I get an email from Adobe “advising” to make Adobe my default pdf reader. It never occurred to them to ask why it isn’t. They have been asked repeatedly to make a change to allow it to work well with TeX and have always refused. So I use a pdf reader that does (SumatraPDF, if you are interested).

9

Adobe’s reputation has certainly taken a beating lately, unfortunately I’m very ingrained to its way of working, pestering Adobe to deactivate you desktop seem to be the best option.

Alternately search for the copy of Photoshop CC that Adobe gave away for free.

Should you decide to buy October is usually the upgrade month if a new version is arriving this year.

10

Just popping in to say I am still using Elements 2. True.

It won’t save .jpgs if I make a minor change, but I thwart it by making a “picture package” and saving THAT as a .jpg!

11

Can you buy an older version on disk? I still have an old MS Office suite on disk that I bought so they couldn’t interfere with my ownership of it. That was 5 computers ago.

12

Adobe’s smarter than that. In my experience Elements 14 doesn’t work in off line mode. It has to “call home” during startup.

13

Update for anyone interested.

Googling, I found that what I needed to ask for was an “activation counter reset.” It seems that Adobe customer service used to do this routinely with little complaint. I also found a suggestion that using the chat function instead of calling would be more likely to be successful.

Neither of these worked.

Apparently, Adobe has decided that it will only sell products on a subscription basis moving forward, and is using whatever means possible to disable the perpetual licenses it has previously granted, with no recourse. Posters at several sites have suggested that this is fraud, a violation of the original license agreement, and grounds for a class action suit. I don’t know if any of those claims has any legal validity.

After failing to get anywhere with the chat agent, I asked to speak to a supervisor, and had a series of increasingly heated calls in which I pointed out that

  1. I had a legal copy of the program which allowed me to install it on two machines.
  2. I had only ever installed it on two machines.
  3. I had last installed it on my current laptop two years ago, and it had been working perfectly since then.
  4. There had been no change to the program or the computer when I got the first notice a few months ago. If there had been an issue with the number of activations, why hadn’t it come up before now?
  5. I said I wanted them to either
    a. Reset the activation counter, or
    b. Refund my original purchase price.

After a long call in which the agent refused to accept my claim that I had not violated their terms, and said it was not possible for them to reset the counter, even though they had been doing it as recently as this past spring, I said I would be filing a claim against Adobe in Massachusetts small claims court.

I made that threat because a poster in the UK said she had gotten a counter reset by sending a final demand letter prior to filing a small claim. I’ve looked into small claims court here, and have started the process online, but since the filing fee is $40 and I only paid $68 for the software, it’s not worth actually completing, except as revenge. So I’ll probably write up my argument on the court’s online filing page, do screengrabs of it all, and send that to Adobe as a final demand and see if that gets any satisfaction.

In the meantime, although I haven’t needed to use the program recently, I’m thinking of buying an unopened cheap copy of Elements 22, which I believe is the last version to have a perpetual license. With any luck, it may last me the rest of my life.

I am so pissed off at Adobe.

14

I can’t say what I want to say, so here’s an oddly random image.

15

I don’t think the situation really justifies poisoning anyone.