For information running Adobe Products under wine:

• See Wine AppDB entries for Adobe Product

Open bugs related to Adobe Products:

• Bugs with Adobe in subject line

Wine AppDB entry:

• Photoshop

• Photoshop Elements

(These notes below should be in the Wine AppDB, but are not all yet. )

Running Adobe Photoshop on Wine

Photoshop 5 through CS2 and CS4 install and work pretty well on wine. Photoshop CS3 has some issues but most things work.

Here are some tips you'll need to run Photoshop successfully:

• You shouldn't have to copy Photoshop from Windows; just install it under Wine by running its Setup.exe. (To run a .exe under wine, you have to doubleclick it, right click and choose "Run with Wine", or run it from the commandline using the 'wine' command, depending on how your Linux distribution integrates Wine.)
• Never use a cracked version of Photoshop.
• Never run Wine as root.
• Use a recent version of Wine (1.1.6 or later).
• When installing Photoshop CS2 trial, be sure to enter your name and organization. If you don't, Photoshop's installer gives a confusing error dialog.

• Before installing Photoshop CS or CS2, do wget http://kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks corefonts vcrun6

  • if the above line produces the error 'cabextract: command not found' type in sudo apt-get install cabextract (Ubuntu/Debian), run, and run the above line again

• Before installing Photoshop CS3, do wget http://kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks gecko gdiplus (or follow these instructions).

• When installing Photoshop CS4, follow these instructions.

• The Clone tool uses the ALT key in a way that conflicts with many window managers. Here's how to fix that:
  • Ubuntu or Fedora: Go to System → Preferences → Windows, and under Movement Key, pick "Super" instead of "Alt".
  • Kubuntu: Go to the K Menu → System Settings → Look and Feel → Windows, and under Movement Key, pick "Super" instead of "Alt".
  • Suse with GNOME: Go to Computer → Control Center → Look and Feel → Windows, and under Movement Key, pick "Super" instead of "Alt".

  • Suse with KDE: Go to the Gecko menu → Favorites → Configure Desktop → Desktop → Window behavior → Window Actions → "Inner Window, Titlebar & Frame", and pick "Meta" instead of "Alt".

• If you have a keyboard with the AltGr key (not many US keyboards have this): duplicating Marquee selections with AltGr+Arrows didn't work, you have to use Ctrl+Alt+Arrows instead

• compiz plugins might also steal important keystrokes (Ctrl+Arrows, Shift+Arrows, Shift+Ctrl+Arrows, Ctrl+Alt+Arrows) used by Photoshop for moving, cuting und duplicating Marquee selections. For instance, see RotateCube. You might need to disable Compiz or those plugins to use Photoshop properly.

• Some UI elements might use a too-small font. In CS2, you can fix this with Edit / Preferences / General, and change UI Font Size from Small to Medium.

Please report any problems you run into. (You can report them to the forum, to the appdb, to bugzilla, or even on your own blog; we're listening everywhere.)

Known Issues

With wine-0.9.58, Photoshop CS2 works really well, so don't be scared by this list of issues!

With wine-1.1.6, Photoshop CS3 is just starting to work, and is slow (and may lose its license as a result).

Here is a partial list of issues:

CS4 installation:

• 18228 Error when installing Adobe Photoshop CS4. (workaround and installation instructions).

CS3 basic functionality:

• 15571 Adobe Photoshop CS3 aborts with missing gdiplus functions (Fixed in git, will be fixed in wine-1.1.10)

CS2 basic functionality:

• 10085 Adobe Bridge CS2 can't start due to licensing problem

Transparency:

• 10091 Transparent images have black backgrounds with Compiz

Z-order:

• 11412 Adobe Photoshop CS2: splash screen z-order problem

• 15572 Adobe Photoshop CS3 z-order problems

Multi-monitor support:

• 12599 Photoshop CS2 image windows don't paint fully if you have two monitors with unequal resolutions

Updaters:

• 11293 Adobe Imageready 7 (part of Photoshop 7) update squirrly

• 11251 Adobe Photoshop CS2 update process funky

Photoshop Elements:

• Photoshop Elements 4 and 5 won't work unless you install Microsoft's ODBC (e.g. using winetricks mdac28). One user recommends doing 'wget http://kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks fakeie6 mdac28 jet40' before installing.

• Photoshop Elements 6 currently doesn't work because the installer doesn't create manifests for MSVCRT assemblies.

See bugs.winehq.org's list of photoshop bugs

Links

Adobe mentions of Wine and Photoshop:

• "Wine offers improved Photoshop-on-Linux support", John Nack, Adobe, 8 Feb 2008

Where to download Adobe Photoshop trials (let's be very conservative -- only adobe.com or trusted US download sites):

• PS 5.5: ftp://ftp1.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/photoshop/win/5.x/ps55try.exe

• PS 6: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/win/6.x/AdobePS6Tryout.exe

• PS 7: http://www.fileplanet.com/59113/50000/fileinfo/Adobe-Photoshop-7.0-Trial---Win32

• PS CS1: http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/photoshop/win/8.x/AdobePhotoshopCS.zip (sha1sum 750f4f69f9291406ced419a6817bf35fca2fc219)

• PS CS2: http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/win/cs2/Photoshop_CS2.exe (sha1sum 88ee09b7a2030d82c9154dd3419252cd6e2db165)

• PS CS3: Photoshop CS3 does not seem to be available on the official site any longer.

• PS CS4: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=illustrator&promoid=EBYEV&loc=en (registration required)

• PSE 2: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshopelements/win/1.x/pse2trial.exe (not a typo, it's really in the wrong directory?)

• PSE 3: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshopelements/win/3.x/PSE3_UE_WinTrial.zip

• PSE 4: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshopelements/win/4.x/PSE_40_WWE_TRYBUY.zip

• PSE 5: http://trials.adobe.com/pub/esd/trial/pse5/PSE_5.0_WIN_TRYBUY_ENG.exe

• PSE 6: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?loc=en&product=photoshop%5Felements

Pages with tips on running Photoshop on Wine (most of which will need radical simplification once Photoshop works easily on Wine):

• http://gentoo-wiki.com/Photoshop

• http://www.peterkroener.de/2007/11/15/liebe-juenger-des-heiligen-steve-und-sklaven-des-maechtigen-bill/ (CS; funny; German)

• http://tuxpepino.wordpress.com/2007/05/28/instalar-dreamweaver-y-photoshop-en-ubuntu/ (Spanish; covers Dreamweaver, too; video)

Automating Photoshop (might be useful for regression tests):

• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting/ (Photoshop Developer Center: Photoshop Scripting)

• http://user.fundy.net/morris/?photoshop21.shtml (one particular Action tutorial)

• http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/Automation/1 (links to many tutorials)

• http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=289 (extensive training videos)

• http://www.codeproject.com/vb/net/AutomatePhotoshop.asp (Controlling Photoshop via COM from VB)

• http://www.pcpix.com/Photoshop/ (Controlling Photoshop via COM from C#)

• http://www.rags-int-inc.com/PhotoTechStuff/PscsScripts/ (Controlling Photoshop with Javascript)

• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/sdk/ (registration required. SDK was also shipped for free on the CD-ROM in Photoshop 4, 5, and 6. Access was restricted later to make it harder for competing apps, e.g. the gimp, to accept photoshop plugins.)

Free Alternatives

• Gimp, Gimpshop, Cinepaint, Krita
• There is also a non-free Linux alternative, called Pixel.

CategoryApplication