Cavechat.org

Adobe has made its entire Creative Suite CS2 (2005 vintage) available for download at no cost! This includes Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2. You will need to create an account on Adobe's site to download the installers.

Mac users, note that CS2 isn't a universal-binary build and requires a PowerPC or Rosetta, so this won't work directly on versions of OS X beyond Snow Leopard. The Windows version will run fine using VMWare, VirtualBox, or Parallels, however.

Quoth Forbes:

If you have a digital creative streak but your budget doesn’t extend far enough to buy Adobe’s Creative Suite applications, this is for you. Adobe have made available an array of applications from its Creative Suite 2 bundle — for free.

Along with the ever-popular Photoshop CS2 are applications such as Premiere Pro CS2, InDesign CS2, and Illustrator CS2. If you want the whole bundle, the entire Creative Suite 2 is also available for download.

CS2 is not new by any standards — it was first released in April 2005 — but it’s still a fantastic offer and capable of some serious work. And when the cost is just the time it takes to download it, it’s a real bargain.

Download Adobe Creative Suite CS2 from Adobe

Note that the download area is currently being slammed this morning (Mon, Jan. 7) since this was just made available, so you may get a "We're sorry, the site area you've requested is unavailable. Please try again later." message.

CS2 is the suite I learned on, and significantly more powerful than free/cheap options like Inkscape or Xara. While cave mappers don't necessarily need all of that available power, this removes the "Illustrator is too expensive" argument from the equation when choosing a program to draw maps in. Kudos to Adobe for taking this road.

OK, Adobe has clarified (news via Forbes) that they shut down the authorization servers for their 8-year-old CS2 line of products, and that they only posted a full downloadable version of the entire CS2 Suite with working serial numbers for existing licensed users. In other words, Adobe says (paraphrase mine) "Please don't download this ancient end-of-life product which we have made available, and please don't use these serial numbers that we've provided for it." The direct download links to all the software and their serial numbers still work on Adobe's website... but you're not "legally" allowed to click on them, whatever that means.

What a wasted opportunity for Adobe, as this appeared to be a fantastic gesture to draw in users of competing software and pirates, while costing Adobe nothing.

Moderators, you may lock or delete this thread if you see it appropriate.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Jan 9 it is still there, complete with serial numbers! I am surprised that Adobe has not slammed the door shut. But then, is it possible to put the programs back?

Not only have they not removed the download link and the serial numbers, they've now made it all available without even requiring you to create an account on their site. So, uh, don't click this link to download an official, outdated, unsupported version of Adobe Illustrator CS2 courtesy of Adobe:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/

Disclaimer: I own a license for Illustrator CS4, and haven't personally tested this old version, CS2, that they're (not?) giving away.

I have tried to run this installation twice, and get into the actual installation when I get this message: "Please insert CD 2 to continue installation." It appears that in order to install the complete program, you have to have the physical disk 2, since I did install the disk 2 download from the site. I did end up with Photoshop, but not Illustrator, which was the main item I was wanting. What am I missing?

Also it appears that this package doesn't work with Windows 7. I am currently using XP, but plan to upgrade soon. So I guess it is all for naught anyway.

Trogman