No question, Adobe did a crappy job transitioning customers like you and me from CS6 to the new CC versions of its apps. There is nothing wrong with the new Photoshop or InDesign. They and all the other Adobe apps are superb, as always. Better than ever, in fact. But updating to a new version (CC) and moving everyone over to a subscription model at the same time was incredibly frustrating for too many of us. The lack of communication from Adobe or even basic instructions on subscribing made it a lot more painful than it needed to be.

In short, their products are fine. But I feel their marketing and corporate communications teams should have been fired.

And then it got worse.

After the dust had settled, I went to update Photoshop via the fabulous Creative Cloud app. I found Photoshop CC and, above it, something new: Photoshop CC 2014. What was this? A promo movie maybe? Or a plug-in? With absolutely no warning it just appeared there. So I searched for information on the Adobe site. All I found was an exhuberant announcement about how great it was, but nothing about WHAT it was.

Well, three months later, it turns out it Photoshop CC 2014 is a completely new version of Photoshop – one whose code had to be completely rewritten. So it couldn’t be just a regular update; it had to be a completely new app. Great! Thanks. Why didn’t Adobe tell us?

Why do I have two versions of my Adobe apps?

Anyway, for everyone who is asking … “Why do I have two versions of all my Adobe apps?” and “Do I need both of these things?” the answer is simple. No, you don’t need both.

But wait! You may want to do the Uninstall of your CC versions AFTER you have the CC 2014 versions installed (and up and running at least once). Many of the new applications will automatically transfer your settings over from the previous version. For example, InDesign CC 2014 now has a “Seamless Update” feature that copies your settings and presets over from your previous version upon first launch. If you had uninstalled the previous version AND removed the preferences from it there would be nothing for the new version to update from.

Each CC Application has its own uninstaller. It’s usually located in the same folder as the application itself (Muse CC may be in your Utilities folder on the Mac). Launch the Uninstaller and it will walk through the process and remove the older version.

What if I need to reinstall an older version later?

One of the benefits of Creative Cloud is that you can still access the older versions all the way back to CS6. You can install an older version any time you need to and you can do it from the Creative Cloud Desktop App. This works even if you never owned CS6 or you came into Creative Cloud after the CC 2014 versions and never had the CC versions before.

The Bottom Line

Adobe apps are amazing. They make work a breeze. No kidding, as a designer I work in InDesign almost as fast as my thoughts will take me. And retouching techniques in Photoshop that used to take 20 minutes now take about 2 minutes. Absolutely fabulous apps. Also, remember that you can have all of these apps installed on up to two computers – one at work and one at home. Even better, you can install one copy on your mac and one on your pc. It used to be that you had to buy separate licences – one for each platform. Lastly, you definitely want to take a look at the NEW product pages on Adobe.com which feature brand new “What’s New” lists (the Marketing team finally got its act together).

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