Ok, but some will have no need to bother.

Skylum has come out with Luminar Flex, which as far as I can tell, is Luminar 3 but without the system crashing 'cataloging' feature.

It claims to support Lightroom (classic) and Photoshop, but the plugin didn't install in Photoshop CS6, even though there was nothing about what VERSION of Photoshop as in it had to be "Creative Cloud" (aka Rent me Forever)  As I have typed before, I have an older version of CC on my computer, and it just sits there for issues like this. I installed Luminar Flex, then went into Programs\Common Files\Adobe\PhotoshopCC\ and copied it over to the Photoshop CS6 (and CS5)directory, and it works without a problem.

Skylum claimed it was a freebie for those who purchased that disaterous Luminar 3, but I had to use one of my Luminar 3 license activations to use it (I will be emailing them regarding that).  As for Flex's functionality, it's much better than Luminar 3. As I am old school, and make my own catalogs of photos, and events, the cataloging feature was of no use to me, so having Flex as a straight up plugin works much better for my work flow.  I still use On1PhotoRaw for developing and the majority of the 'heavy lifting', but sometimes, I have to add a little something from other photo processing programs that On1 lacks.  (Sorry, On1, you know I'm a big fan, but even well known On1 photographers use Lightroom for other tweaks).

If your system can handle Luminar 3 (mine is no slouch, but even with this beast, Luminar 3 would grind things to a glacial crawl) there's no real need for Flex.  But for me, personally, Flex is a much better fit than Luminar 3 in my Photoshop workflow.

Playing around with On1 and Alienskin with CS5

I know quite a few people who still use CS5, don't want to rent CC, and didn't get CS6 because they didn't need it, and they feel left out because too many software makers aren't including it in their new plugins and tools.

Because I actually still have CS5 (and CS6, which is still being supported) I test and experiment to find ways to make things works.

I posted before on how to use On1PhotoRaw 2018 as your default RAW editor.  It slams Adobe Camera Raw to the sidelines when it comes to what it can do.  But you do have to go through a few hoops to get it to work with CS5 as a plugin, but there is a way.

But moving on to Alienskin.  I had been using OnOne Focal Point 2, but with the installation of On1PhotoRaw plugins, it doesn't work. You get a JAVASCRIPT error. 

 

If you remove the photoraw plugins, it will go back to working. That is rather fiddly to have to do. 

Enter Alienskin Bokeh.  I installed it to CS5 years ago, and have kept it updated. It's one of the few Adobe compatible plugins you can SELECT what host program you want to install it to.  It works just as well as OnOne Focal Point 2. I really liked Focal Point, but seeing that AlienSkin can pick up where FP left off, means I still have that tool as part of CS5.

Now that I’m not falling asleep at the keyboard

And have had some sleep, I am revisiting my Adobe complaint.

Over the past 10+ years, I have purchased "Boxed" aka store bought versions of Adobe products.  CS3 E, CS5 E, CS6 Master Collection, Photoshop Elements (9, 10, 11).  I dutifully made an Adobe account, registered each and every purchase without fail, or incident. I had taken a screencap of all my products listed. I think that vanished because of a system restore, but I haven't given up looking for it.

The only product I purchased directly from the Adobe site as a download was CS6 E.

When my CS5 after years of no problems threw out the "Trial has expired", I was "whohuhwha?". Thinking it had to do with hardware upgrade (motherboard, HHD etc) I typed in my CS5 serial that was on the box.  Then picked up my 'qualifying product' for the CS5 upgrade, typing in the CS3 E serial, only to get "Invalid Serial Number".  *boggle*

I headed to my Adobe account, login to make sure I had the serial numbers correct, and then only find CS6 E listed.  WTF?  I checked every link, and even started a (useless) chat session.  I ended up getting CS5 E working again without resorting to 'convincing' it to work if you get my drift.

So then, the support chat went to "Where did all my other products go?"  This is where I am calling "Bullshit" on Adobe. Suddenly, after 5, 7 and 11 years, all my non-downloaded software are suddenly not mine, or never purchased, or don't exist.  I gave up on that support session.

Started one with Adobe Customer Care on Twitter.  The story changed. This time, I was told my products were teacher/educational ones. Uhh, no. Packaging of those would clearly have Student/Teacher Labels, and guess what? Mine don't.  I even sent photographic proof of that.  Then the ACC on Twitter said "Send your invoices as proof".  I looked, and looked, and looked. Paypal and online bank records only go back to 2015. That's three years. My purchases were 5, 7, and 11 years ago.

Wing believes, seeing as the problem first started with old CS3, then CS5 and now CS6, that it's Adobe's way of painting people in a corner, forcing them to rent their software, instead of using the old tried and true. And remember, only the store bought hardcopy versions registered with Adobe disappeared from my Adobe account.

Yes, I know there are ways to 'convince' these programs to work, but there should be no need for me to resort to that as I bought and paid for mine.

Seriously, what the hell

I have Adobe CS5 Extended. I have had it for a long time. I upgraded it from Adobe CS3 Extended.  For years, I have been using it without any problems.  Although I have CS6E, I use CS5 to tutor those who have it, and to test plug ins to see if they will work with earlier versions.

Today, I started it up and it says "NOT A VALID LICENSE NUMBER".  WTF?  Ok, figuring it was a system hiccup, I get both boxes with the license/serial numbers.  I put in the one for CS5E. All good.  Then it wants the serial for qualifying product, CS3 E.  Invalid serial number.  I double checked to make sure I didn't mistype. Nope, but the interface still says invalid serial number. I type it in again, STILL invalid number.

I head off to Adobe site, to my account to check to make sure all my info is correct.  Imagine my surprise when the ONLY product listed is ONE instance of CS6E.  Bizarre considering I have CS6 Master Suite, too.  And CS5, and CS3, and 4 different versions of Photoshop Elements.

Seeing no way to rectify this problem myself, I start up help chat. Was told it would be a 4 minute wait. Ok, no problem.  Then it said 3 minute wait. Good, good. Then it jumped to 20 minute wait. Huh?   Then an hour.  Then down to 15 minutes.  Then back up to an hour.

I don't have time to futz around waiting.  Let's just say I got it working again. I look at it this way. I legally own my copies of CS3E and CS5E. If Adobe doesn't want it to play nice, I, like a good mommy, will MAKE it play nice.

On1 Photo RAW 2017–First Impressions

No longer will you be saddled with Adobe Camera Raw popup telling your version of Photoshop that the file format is unknown. 

To use it as a plugin for photoshop you do need version C6 and above.

That being typed, make sure you already have your earlier version of photoshop up and running CS5 (which I did) then On1 Raw 2017 stand alone, do all your edits/adjustments in On1, right click on image and "Send to Photoshop" and it will open as a 16bit PSD with all your edits and adjustments.  Not sure if this worked because I have CS6 and Trial CC installed.  If so, leave the trial CC installed, and keep using CS5. :D  Or just scroll down and select “Send to other application” and select your version of Photoshop, or other photo editing software.

This was just a quick On1 Raw edit, with some tweaks to dynamic contrast, and a bit of sky enhancing.

Remember, one of the biggest reasons people started ‘renting’ Creative Cloud was because of no Camera Raw support for new cameras except for CC.  With On1Raw you don't have to worry about having to convert everything over to DNGs, doubling your storage needs (unless you delete the CR2/ORF/RAW etc etc files after converting)

In a market of competing software

There are sometimes too many choices, and it can get confusing.

Many people felt coerced into getting CS6 or Creative Cloud because of new camera raw formats, even though their earlier versions of Photoshop worked just fine, but Adobe didn't update camera raw data base for those versions.

One great work around with this is using CaptureOne.  It's less expensive then 'renting' Photoshop, and if you took up their free offer of CaptureOne version six, upgrading to v8 is even less expensive than Adobe Lightroom.

The tools in CaptureOne is like taking Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, and some aspects of Photoshop and making them into one neat package. it can be a bit overwhelming with all the menu choices, but taking your time and get familiar with them, and you will be developing a workflow that will become second nature. 

Once more into the breach.. for some, not for me!

Adobe has come out with Creative Cloud 2014.  Of course, they didn't warn anyone that Creative Cloud 2013 (for want of better label0 plugins might not, or more likely, will not work with their latest and greatest.

People who had CS6E/CS6 had the same problem.  I worked at it until I solved some of the "plug-ins for CS6 will not be updated to work in CC."  I had this problem with CS5 to CS6, and by spotting that the plugins worked in the 32bit Photoshop CS6, I manually copied the plugin files, their associated DLLs and activation tool, they all functioned perfectly in CS6E 64bit.

Along came CC, and the the trial, I had the same problem. I found out manually copying the plugins to the 32bit Photoshop CC 2013 worked just fine, but but not in the 64bit, so I had to be careful of the work. 

Every thing I have works just fine, the only thing I can think of having to do, it keep a 'past it's trial date' version of CC on the hard drive so I can download and install latest Camera Raw, if necessary.  I have that work around so I can use CS6 Adobe Camera Raw in CS5 Bridge.  That's too handy of a trick to lose.

A most unhelpful reply

I have been posting for 2 years on a thread I started on the Adobe Forums about CS6 Bridge being so slow. 

Some twit decided to say he didn't feel like wading through 4 pages/130 posts to see if he could help.

I asked him "Then why did you bother posting this reply?" 

He also said it's not a general problem.  Really?  I know quite a number of people who have this problem, many of them who didn't have an earlier version of Photoshop so didn't know its behavior was glacially slow. And instead of post "ME TOO!" they just visit the thread to see if there have been any new developments.

So, for this lazy person, I posted everything in one post. Did some copy/paste, some editing to make sure I wasn't repeating myself and posted it as a reply.

Not going to hold my breath.

After much testing this, that or the other thing

The final solution to Adobe CS6 Bridge being slow is this:

Copy the Adobe Camera Raw.8bi v8.3 into the C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-ins\CS5\File Formats folder. This way, you will get all the metadata, AND when you press space bar to preview the images, you get the full embedded jpg view.

You have to right click, "Open With Photoshop CS6" and ACR 8.3 opens without a hitch. But if you right click and select OPEN IN CAMERA RAW you get the "unable to use the Camera Raw plug-in. It is not compatible with this version of Bridge." (leading me to believe if I had really great programming skills, I could remove that version checking that would allow it to launch on a double click. Maybe someone other than me can figure that one out.)

On the rare occasion I really need to tweak a jpg in Adobe camera Raw, I'll just use CS6 to do so.

Holy crow, that worked!

For almost 2 years, I've been dealing with glacier slow Adobe CS6 Bridge. Every fix/tweak/suggest has been tried with no results. CS5 Bridge was always faster. What I did was this. I left CS5 installed (smartest thing I did). Using yLaunch, I made a short cut for Photoshop CS6 and Bridge CS5. Biggest problem was newer ORF files are unreadable by Bridge CS5, so I convert those to DNG. But how to get the latest Adobe Camera Raw to work with it? It was so simple, I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner. I went into C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-ins\CS5\File Fomats and moved the Camera Raw.8bi out of there to my desktop. I launched PSCS6 and CS5 Bridge with yLaunch. Opened CS5 Bridge preferences and changed every instance of Photoshop CS5 to Photoshop CS6. Restarted Bridge. Double clicked on a DNG, and voila, it opened in Adobe Camera Raw 8.2 without a problem. I tried this on Canon CR2 files, and it worked, too. And all the scripts to photomerge or other tasks work with CS5 Bridge. And after doing this, the ORF files were viewable in Bridge CS5. Halli-fekking-luliah!