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How to fix MacOSX Migration Assistant clashing with Adobe CS3 and CS4

Veit — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:02:03 +0000

After I rebuilt my Mac using the Migration Assistant, everything worked – with the exception of Adobe’s Creative Suite, CS3. Getting CS3 to work turned out to be a much bigger issue than I thought, with many hours spent digging through Adobe’s knowledgebase, their forums and on their phone. The same Migration Assistant issue exists for Adobe CS4 and can also be solved by using the steps outlined below.

In general, the problem is as follows: If you use the MacOSX Migration Assistant to migrate to a new Mac or to rebuild an existing Mac, chances are very high that you will run into the dreaded Adobe Creative Suite “Licensing for this product has stopped” issue. Even if you do not migrate your applications (as I did), the Migration Assistant migrates some of its settings, which renders the Creative Suite product unable to start. To analyze my CS3 problems, I went as far as installing a trial copy of Photoshop CS4, which would not work either. That alerted me to the fact that this was not a licensing issue for a particular CS component, but for all of Adobe’s creative suite products.

There are only two ways how to fix this issue:

Reinstall your Mac without the use of the Migration Assistant (only to be used as a last resort, if everything else fails)
Do some open-heart surgery (don’t worry – if it fails, your only alternative would have been a complete reinstall anyway)

Following are step-by-step instructions of how to get Adoce Creative Suite CS3 and CS4 to work again:

Make sure you have copies of your Adobe products handy, since you will need to reinstall them. Don’t start this without having the disks or files you need for reinstallation.
You will also need your admin/super-user password.
Download a copy of the Adobe Flash player, since you will lose Flash in the process. Don’t install it yet.
Download a copy of the Adobe CS3 clean script (there’s also one for CS4). Run it to uninstall CS3. It will delete the entire CS3 installation plus Flash.
Uninstall any other Adobe software – better safe than sorry.
Go to the following folders one at a time and delete anything that starts with “Adobe”, “Macromedia” and “FlexNet” or has it somewhere in its name:

/Library/Application Support
/Library/Preferences
/Applications
/Applications/Utilities
~/Library/Application Support
Use the finder to search for Adobe, Macromedia or FlexNet. Examine every file or folder – if in doubt throw it away

Empty your recycling bin, so all the files are gone for sure!
Reboot.
Reinstall the Flash Player that you downloaded in Step 3.
Install CS3 from your install disks. Bingo, it works!
Install any other Adobe product that you removed.

Done! Now my Mac is fully restored!

Mac OSX: Reinstall with Great Results

Veit — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:34:51 +0000

After almost three years and two MacOSX upgrades, my MacBook Pro finally came to the point where I needed to do a re-install. Too many installs and uninstalls of programs and all these upgrades had left the Pro unstable with frequent hangs-ups.

Being no stranger to re-installs (e.g., every year my XP systems get re-installed), I expected better than XP and got positively surprised. After doing one backup in addition to my regular Time Machine and Chronosync backups, I formatted the hard drive and did a fresh Snow Leopard install. During the install, I used the Migration Assistant to restore from Time Machine all of my user settings and data except for the program (since I had many that I did not need any longer).

The results were spectacular. After 2 hours, my MacBook Pro was ready, with all the Apple apps installed and all data present. Once click on mail.app and all my mail was back. Ditto with Safari – everything was preserved. I started to re-install one third-party app after another — for every app, it had retained the licensing info and they all worked again from the very first start after finishing the installation. The only exceptions were Adobe’s apps (Photoshop CS3 and Dreamweaver CS3). Despite deactivating the Photoshop license, but not the Dreamweaver license, before erasing the disk, both apps did not run after the re-install. Everything else worked immediately and flawlessly.

Way better than any Windows re-built that I’ve ever done! I’m a happy camper today…

One Finger Discount in response to MacHeist

Veit — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:43:46 +0000

The MacHeist bundle has often been controversial and the free MacHeist nano bundle (5+1 apps for free for 4 more days) isn’t different, either. Upset by the nano-bundle, a coalition of Mac developers, organized by Daniel Jerkut, the developer of MarsEdit, now offers its own discounts: While the MacHeist nano bundle is alive, they offer the “One Finger Discount” (no, they do not specify which finger) – 20% off of all software from all participating Mac developers.

Simply go to OneFingerDiscount.com to see a list of participating developers – so far, 75 and growing. All of them have links to their stores, where you can enter the coupon code “One Finger Discount” to get 20%. So check them out and if you need to stock up on Mac software, this is your opportunity.

Among the participating developers are Red Sweater Software, Smile on my Mac and Tiny Planet Software.

Mac bundle season: MacHeist for free!

Veit — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:18:02 +0000

After the Macfriendly bundle was released (and did not really sell well), MacHeist is next. This time with a free bundle of 5+1 apps. Since it’s free, there is no reason for you to not get it, so grab it now.

My quick take on the bundle:

If you are a Twitterer, getting Twitterific for free alone warrants your trip to the MacHeist site.
If you get distracted by all your windows on your Mac while writing your latest novel, give WriteRoom a try – it takes over your entire screen, thus allowing you to really focus on your writings.
TinyGrab is a screen capturing utility with a twist – you can upload your screenshots straight to your own FTP server and use the provided URLs to tell people where to find them. I will probably not use it, since I have enough screen grabbing software already.
If you are in need of organizing all the tiny bits of info, ShoveBox is a great app for that. I would use it, but I already use YoJimbo for exactly that purpose.
Hordes of Orcs is a good take on tower defense games.
Still locked, the most desirable app is MarinerWrite, a full fledged text editor. This one I will definitely install, should it get unlocked.

The value of this bundle cannot be beat, so head on over to MacHeist and download it now.

Canon details Windows 7 compatibility

Veit — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:03:18 +0000

Contrary to Nikon, which released a new version of ViewNX this week without support for Snow Leopard or Windows 7, Canon released a PDF file clarifying which Canon cameras support Windows 7. Basically, unless your camera is very old, your Canon software is Window 7 compatible.

Thanks, Canon, for handling this better than Nikon.

Nikon’s support for Snow Leopard and Win 7? Not quite yet…

Veit — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:36:34 +0000

On the day of the release of Windows 7, Nikon released an update of its ViewNX software. Of course, no Nikon user should expect support for a brand-new operating system on the day of its release, so the update supports XP and Vista, but not Windows 7. To the same tune, Nikon users should not expect support for a 2-month old OS version – Snow Leopard is not supported by this update, either.

If I were a Nikon user, I had abandoned their software years ago – no matter how good it is. This kind of OS support is simply not acceptable, esp. when Nikon’s competition (Adobe) supported Snow Leopard and Windows 7 the day it was released!

Details on the ViewNX update can be found on Nikon’s website.

Yet another easy way to import iPhone or digicam photos on your Mac

Veit — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:56:53 +0000

One of the hidden gems that comes with every Mac is Image Capture. Originally intended to connect your digital camera to your Mac, it also works for the iPhone. Plus, it has a few very impressive tricks built right into it.

Quickly build web photo galleries or PDF contact sheets with Image Capture

Once your iPhone is connected and you have Image Capture fired up, the iPhone, any digital camera or any memory card show up under Devices. Browse your images in list or thumbnail view, enlarge thumbnails and copy selected or all photos to your hard drive or into Mail or iPhoto. Yes, it is that simple.

But that’s not all. Image Capture has some impressive additional tricks up its sleeve:

Use Image Capture to take photos directly from the Mac (does not work for the iPhone and not for all cameras, although it typically works for Canon point&shoots)
Want to scan something? Connect a scanner, then scan directly from Image Capture
Create PDF contact sheets or web photo galleries
Share your iPhone (in the lower left of the screen) and immediately access your iPhone photos from any computer on your network.

If you are a proud Mac owner and have not discovered Image Capture yet (or have not used it in a while), give it a try – it’s worth it!

Supported image formats: Anything that iPhoto can read: JPEG, PNG, TIF, PSD and almost all current RAW formats.

Cameras helps MacOSX to import photos from your iPhone and other cameras

Veit — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:17:39 +0000

Update: If you alredy upgraded to Snow Leopard, its updated Image Capture utility now lets you specify which application to open based on what memory card you inserted or what camera you connected. That renders Cameras obsolete unless you want to preview your images, which you cannot do in Image Capture.

If you are like me, you have multiple cameras, that all get connected to the same computer (in my case, a MacBook Pro). However, when I connect them, I don’t want to import every single image into the same app. My iPhone snapshots typically get downloaded via PhoneView, whereas I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to organize all of my DSLR images. And whenever my wife uses her point&shoot, her pictures go into iPhoto.

The problem is, though, that MacOSX opens all attached cameras (or memory cards in my case) with the same app. Not any longer. Cameras is a free preference pane that does one thing only: Specify which application will be used when a certain camera or memory card reader is connected.

I’m not sure how Cameras works if you want to transfer video that was shot with a still camera, but in my case, I don’t typically do that. Thus, once set up, I started to rely on Cameras very quickly and would miss it, if it was gone.

Price: Free from Flexibits.com

How to get ready for the Apple Mac OSX Snow Leopard upgrade

Veit — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:30:38 +0000

Since many of us iPhone owners also use Macs, you might be as excited as I am about the release of Snow Leopard, which will go on sale this Friday. Once you have yours, you will undoubtedly set aside some time to get it installed right away.

Amazingly, it’s still unclear whether you can do a fresh install (meaning that you can essentially get Snow Leopard for $29). Apple is not telling. So we might have to wait until Friday, but the smart bets are on updates to Leopard only. If you are like me, this is important, since I plan to also upgrade my MacBook Pro to a larger hard-drive at the same time.

Equally important is the question how to best prepare for the upgrade? An excellent article covering Snow Leopard upgrade preparation can be found on Lifehacker.

Also, in case you wonder whether your applications will run on Snow Leopard, a lot will for sure. On the photography side, Photoshop CS4, CS3 and Lightroom will, but Photoshop CS2 might not. All of Apple’s apps should run on Snow Leopard as well. For a list of popular software apps and their compatibility with Snow Leopard, check out Wikidot.

If you have not ordered your copy of Snow Leopard yet and you run on an Intel Mac (it will not work on PowerPC), you should do so as soon as possible.

Price:
Single upgrade: $29.00, Amazon: $25.00
Family Pack of 5: $49.00, Amazon: $43.99

Cameras helps MacOSX to import photos from your iPhone and other cameras

Veit — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 05:40:25 +0000

Price: Free from Flexibits.com