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Opening Files in CS3 instead of CS5

C

citizenzen

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 22, 2010
1,543
11,787
Our office recently upgraded to CS5... and I hate it.

HATE IT.

I still have CS3 on my mac and would like to change my defaults so files open in CS3. I don't want to get rid of CS5 because I may have some use for it on occasion.

Everything I've tried has failed. Even though I set my Info or Open File to a CS3 program it defaults back to CS5.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
citizenzen said:
Our office recently upgraded to CS5... and I hate it.

HATE IT.
Click to expand...

Just curious here, but what do you hate about CS5 so much? Other than some new features, I don't really find it that much different in terms of everyday use.

citizenzen said:
I still have CS3 on my mac and would like to change my defaults so files open in CS3. I don't want to get rid of CS5 because I may have some use for it on occasion.

Everything I've tried has failed. Even though I set my Info or Open File to a CS3 program it defaults back to CS5.
Click to expand...

Have you tried changing the defaults in Bridge? That might well do the trick.

Jim Campbell said:
Don't double-click the files you want to open, drag them to a CS3 icon in your dock instead.
Click to expand...

You can also just right-click them and choose CS3 from the "Open With..." menu, but either of these workarounds will get tedious after a while.
 
IgnatiusTheKing said:
Just curious here, but what do you hate about CS5 so much? Other than some new features, I don't really find it that much different in terms of everyday use.
Click to expand...

I primarily work in inDesign and was having a really difficult time with placed images. In previous versions (I only got up to CS3) the black arrow handled the frame and the white arrow handled the content inside... no problem.

In CS5 I the behavior of these arrows went from rock-solid consistent to wildly schizophrenic... to the point that I had to click and reselect tools and objects multiple times to do the simplest tasks.

That is the most important reason. In CS3 I could work more intuitively without thinking about the tool. In CS5 the tool definitely got in the way of my work.


IgnatiusTheKing said:
Have you tried changing the defaults in Bridge? That might well do the trick.
Click to expand...

I'll have to take a look at Bridge... I'd forgotten about that.

In the meantime, I'm right-clicking and going with Open With...

I'll try to lessen the half dozen times in my day that I reflexively double-click on a file... only to regret that move.

I'll also take a look at Soxy.
 
citizenzen said:
I primarily work in inDesign and was having a really difficult time with placed images. In previous versions (I only got up to CS3) the black arrow handled the frame and the white arrow handled the content inside... no problem.

In CS5 I the behavior of these arrows went from rock-solid consistent to wildly schizophrenic... to the point that I had to click and reselect tools and objects multiple times to do the simplest tasks.

That is the most important reason. In CS3 I could work more intuitively without thinking about the tool. In CS5 the tool definitely got in the way of my work.
Click to expand...

Maybe you have a bad install because I don't have that issue at all. My selection/direct selection arrows work as they always did.

I don't really mind that in CS5 you can just click the little "bullseye" in the middle of a placed image to automatically switch to the direct selection, though I might turn it off if I could because I'm so used to using the "V" and "A" keyboard shortcuts to switch between the tools.
 
IgnatiusTheKing said:
You can also just right-click them and choose CS3 from the "Open With..." menu, but either of these workarounds will get tedious after a while.
Click to expand...

You don't have to do this manually each time. You can set this globally for file types.

Right click (or Control + Click) on a file > "Get Info"

There's an "Open with:" section with a combo box to select the app you want. And there's a "Change All..." button below it to apply to all files of that type.
 
citizenzen said:
I primarily work in inDesign and was having a really difficult time with placed images. In previous versions (I only got up to CS3) the black arrow handled the frame and the white arrow handled the content inside... no problem.

In CS5 I the behavior of these arrows went from rock-solid consistent to wildly schizophrenic... to the point that I had to click and reselect tools and objects multiple times to do the simplest tasks.
Click to expand...

You're clicking the circle in the middle of the frame. Clicking that and dragging is like switching to the direct select tool. Click anywhere else and it will be like normal.

It's actually a quicker way to work with placed artwork once you get used to it.
 
eponym said:
You don't have to do this manually each time. You can set this globally for file types.

Right click (or Control + Click) on a file > "Get Info"

There's an "Open with:" section with a combo box to select the app you want. And there's a "Change All..." button below it to apply to all files of that type.
Click to expand...

If you read the OP, that was tried and did not work. Hence all of the alternate suggestions.
 
citizenzen said:
...
In the meantime, I'm right-clicking and going with Open With...

I'll try to lessen the half dozen times in my day that I reflexively double-click on a file... only to regret that move.
Click to expand...

I have Creative Suite 5 installed, and also InDesign CS4 standalone because I have a folder of work which I need to maintain in CS4 for a particular client (linked to their server, so they can do text edits).

However, I've left my settings in Get Info to open all ID documents in CS5 by default.

I've noticed that, if ID CS4 is already open, then double clicking on any ID document in the Finder will open it (or attempt to*) in CS4 - i.e. it won't try to launch CS5, irrespective of my settings in Get Info.

Does the same apply to ID CS3 alongside ID CS5?

*Obviously CS4 won't open a file that's already been created/edited in CS5, but that's not a problem for me. I'm just interested in ensuring that this particular client's files don't accidentally get opened and saved in CS5, which they won't be able to edit.
 
FourCandles said:
I've noticed that, if ID CS4 is already open, then double clicking on any ID document in the Finder will open it (or attempt to*) in CS4 - i.e. it won't try to launch CS5, irrespective of my settings in Get Info.

Does the same apply to ID CS3 alongside ID CS5?
Click to expand...

It does not, at least for me. I have a similar situation with a client still using CS3, and almost every time I work on those files, I end up with both versions of ID open because of my mindless double-clicking.
 
Here's one more of my CS5 gripes...

iMacs, iPads, iPhones are all elegantly simple designs.

But the interface of CS5 is anything but.

The hardware may be Mac, but the software is very PC: complicated and conspicuous.

I hope that somebody reinvents the user interface soon and we can leave ungainly dinosaurs like CS5 behind.
 
Wirelessly posted (htc EVO 4G: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-us; Sprint APA9292KT Build/ERE27) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

I think there are too many tools in InDesign for the UI to be simple. Even though I use a ton of keyboard shortcuts, I like having everything in front of me. ID CS5 is rather ugly and PC-like though...
 
Anyone else had problems with the new .idml format that has replaced .indx in CS5?
Indx wasn't foolproof but at least the file opened... Trying to open my CS5 idml on colleagues CS3 just doesn't work... 'don't have the right plug ins'... RUBBISH.
 
Ray Manorak said:
Anyone else had problems with the new .idml format that has replaced .indx in CS5?
Indx wasn't foolproof but at least the file opened... Trying to open my CS5 idml on colleagues CS3 just doesn't work... 'don't have the right plug ins'... RUBBISH.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately it only "saves" back one version, i.e. readable by CS4.
 
Agreed. The fact that Adobe dropped the ability to save back more than one version of InDesign definitely sucks. Just another way to "force" more people to upgrade...
 
I don't think they've dropped the abilty as such, have they? As far as I'm aware, indx only went back one version too...at least I'm pretty sure I remember that CS4 couldn't save back to CS2.
 
Soxy didn't help

I downloaded and tried Soxy, mentioned above, but it doesn't control psd files. Does anyone have any other suggestions or apps that will force psd files to open in CS4 and not CS5? I also changed all of my bridge settings, but it didn't work.

We installed CS5 because one of our clients uses it, but several of our printers don't accept CS5 files, I find InDesign to be extremely laggy, and Photoshop crashed on update and wouldn't open anymore. So I'm back to CS4.
 
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