Adobe offers the second Creative Suite for free to everyone!

[silvohex]

The second Creative Suite was released in 2005, so it's fairly old, but despite its age it is pretty good today, and runs on modern systems! I advise all of you to take advantage of this while it's up.
Why has this been done? The activation servers for CS2 are being terminated, and CS2 is pretty much abandonware now.

These are the links, directly from Adobe. Some are Mac, some are Windows, so check the extension before downloading.

Download links and keys​

• Creative Suite 2

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CS2_install_Mac.pdf
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/STES/CS_20_IE_NonRet_D1.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/STES/CS_20_IE_NonRet_D2.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/STES/CS_20_IE_NonRet_D3.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/VCS2.dmg
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CS_2.0_IE_Extras_1.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CS2_install_Win.pdf
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1.exe
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CreativeSuiteCS2Disc2.exe
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CreativeSuiteCS2Disc3.exe
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/VCS2.zip
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/MLTI/CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1130-0412-8377-1896-9751-5759
• Key for Windows - 1130-1414-7569-4457-6613-5551

• Acrobat 3D 1.0 for Windows

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/AC3D/AC3D_1.0_Volume_NACK_WWE.zip
[/list]

• Key for Windows - 1159-1414-7569-3493-5006-5653

• Acrobat Standard 7.0

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/ACRO/12001748.dmg
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/ACRO/22001904.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1016-0414-2428-7157-5404-6669
• Key for Windows - 1016-1415-6379-6184-1333-2468

• Acrobat Pro 8.0

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/STEP/APRO8_Mac_WEB_WWEFG.dmg
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/STEP/APRO23_Win_ESD1_WWEFG.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1118-0416-1130-3724-2927-7040
• Key for Windows - 1118-1414-1955-8737-8172-0350

• Audition 3.0

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/AUDT/ADBEAudition_loopolgy.exe
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/AUDT/ADBEAudition_ESD1_WWEFGJIS.exe
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/AUDT/ADBEAudition_loopolgy.7z
[/list]

• Key for Windows - 1137-1004-8571-6848-7845-8029

• GoLive CS2

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/GLIVE/GL_CS2_UE_NonRet.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/GLIVE/GL_CS2_UE_NonRet.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1033-0415-6162-2671-3431-0993
• Key for Windows - 1033-1418-1610-5696-5209-0095

• Illustrator CS2

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/ILST/AI_CS2_IE_NonRet.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/ILST/AI_CS2_IE_NonRet.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1034-0416-0740-0527-2887-2375
• Key for Windows - 1034-1415-6230-2341-2884-9398

• InCopy CS2

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/AICY/IC_CS2_UE_NonRet.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/AICY/IC_CS2_UE_NonRet.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1036-0414-4367-5110-5897-2432
• Key for Windows - 1036-1419-3531-6378-2148-9313

• InDesign CS2

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/IDSN/ID_CS2_UE_NonRet.dmg
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/IDSN/ID_CS2_UE_NonRet.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1037-0413-9961-4063-8457-1098
• Key for Windows - 1037-1412-5094-8316-6812-7982

• Photoshop CS2

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/PHSP/PhSp_CS2_English.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/PHSP/PhSp_CS2_English.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1045-0410-5403-3188-5429-0639
• Key for Windows - 1045-1412-5685-1654-6343-1431

• Photoshop Elements 4.0/5.0

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/PSE/PSE4_Mac_WWE_ESD1.dmg.bin
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/PSE/PSE_5.0_WIN_ESD1_ENG.exe
[/list]

• Key for Mac OS - 1057-0410-8218-6295-1699-9560
• Key for Windows - 1057-1414-3729-7573-7352-1206

• Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0

[list type=decimal]
[*]http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/creativesuite/CS2_EOL/PPRO/PPRO_2.0_Ret-NH_UE.zip
[/list]

• Key for Windows - 1132-1280-4900-7476-5108-8019

That should be it! Enjoy, and please keep this in the TMS community!

 

[Mave]

May I recommend Illustrator & Photoshop CS2. Worked with CS2 myself in school and they are still pretty good, if you want official software but don't have 2000$, install these.

 

[Mave]

BUMP

Unfortunately, it appears that Adobe wasn't really intending to give out CS2 for everyone. Shortly after news of the apparently free software spread across Twitter on Monday, the download page became unavailable, producing an error instead. Subsequent blog and forum posts indicate that this wasn't an inspired decision to liberate an obsolete but still useful application after all. It was something between a mistake, an error of judgement, and a misunderstanding.

CS2 used a product activation scheme to control licensing. When you install the software, it interrogates an Internet server to ensure that the license key you entered is acceptable. In December, Adobe retired the activation servers used by CS2. This posed a problem for CS2's licensed users, because without the activation servers, they can no longer reinstall the software.

To help these people out, Adobe offered versions of CS2 that didn't need activation. Mere entry of the serial numbers that Adobe put on the download page would suffice. The company says that although it looks like it was giving the software away for free, it in fact wasn't. It was just trying to assist its customers. Adobe says in order to legally use CS2, users still require a purchased license.

There are ways that Adobe could have helped out these users that didn't result in putting the software up on a server that anyone could get at. For example, the company could have released a patch that removed the activation checks from the applications and the license key entry from the installer. This could work with original media, and hence not require distribution of CS2. For whatever reason, the company decided not to go this route.

So it turns out that rather than doing something a little bit daring and unusual—something that might even inspire a new approach to licensing old, obsolete software—Adobe was doing something somewhat useful for existing, paid up, licensed users, in a rather peculiar way. This is a shame. The company could have earned a lot of goodwill by making CS2 free, and it would have been easy enough to offer a no-cost license for the software.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/adobe-almost-does-something-amazing-by-accident/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29