Photoshop CS3 Beta Special Report: Serial number rejection, workarounds

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 12:46 a.m. PT

3 min read

[Remember that if you think you are having a serial number rejection issue, make sure that you are using the serial number generated from your Photoshop CS2 number by this page: https://www.adobe.com/go/photoshopcs3beta_serialnumber. You cannot simply enter your CS2 serial number in the CS3 startup screen. It should also be noted that serial numbers are platform-specific. A Photoshop CS2 for Windows license will not generate a valid Photoshop CS3 beta for Mac OS X key, for instance.]

Two weeks after its initial release, users are still experiencing some frustrating serial number rejection issues with the Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta.

One point of contention is with regard to site licenses -- both corporate and academic. It appears that once one user under the site license has activated a the Photoshop CS2 serial number (shared between all users under the site license), subsequent users are obviated from doing so.

As described by MacFixIt reader Michael: "I work for a advertising agency in London and we have a site license that is covered with a world wide serial number. All our agencies in the world use the same key. The number has already been used and so I can not get a CS3 license. Hopefully Adobe can sort this out."

Joy Denton adds: "There are many users on our campus at University of Michigan who have attempted to obtain the Beta with this result. It's really disturbing since these users are trying to be legal. I'm sure there are ways for people to obtain this item illegally and that's what's really annoying. Just because one's license happens to be a site license, this should not work against them. You'd think Adobe would want to encourage users to test this product on all sorts of Apple hardware. What better place than a university where there is a broad assortment of hardware and environments in which to test their product?"

Meanwhile, we've received new word from an Adobe spokesperson that the product team "continues to address the issues with the serial numbers."

According to a blog post on John Nack's (Senior Product Manager for Photoshop), the serial number rejection issues we covered last Friday -- where users were having valid Photoshop CS2 serial numbers (especially for academic licenses) rejected by the CS3 beta serial number generator.

Nack says "We believe we've addressed the issue," and clarifies that academic licenses for Photoshop CS2 do qualify users for removal of the 2-day trial period.

Some users are still having problems, however. If your CS2 serial number has been rejected by the generator, please let us know.

Index: