Exciting Discovery

The day started with a very exciting discovery.  I am slowly...slowly...slowly moving things back into the office and tossing so much of it.  I went to examine what I thought was a free standing series of shelves, but turned out to be a vertical file, fallen on its side.  When I picked it up, it broke an the contents spilled out.  And there....I couldn't believe it...was the original, "I paid for it myself" copy of Photoshop CS3.

In the early years of our friendship, Peggy used to get pirated copies of very good software from I can't remember where--Singapore, maybe.  (She also had more computer crashes than anybody I know, which may have something to do with all that pirated software).  She gave me a few programs, but I didn't use nearly as much as she did, so I think only maybe 3 programs.  One of those was Photoshop CS2...and it worked.  I got past my scruples about the legality of pirated software, I am ashamed to say, because I really wanted this ~$1,000 program for free.  

I might not have become so addicted to Photoshop had I not gone to Australia.  Peggy had a multi-disk Photoshop tutorial and, because she usually slept a couple of hours (or more) later than I did, for the better part of six weeks I would pass the time waiting for her to wake up by doing the Photoshop tutorials.  I didn't do amazing things with Photoshop, or even use a  fraction of its capabilities, but I did use it and the things I learned to do with it were things that I relied on heavily.

I knew that the newer operating systems did not run old software and was beyond shocked when I could not install my faithful Photoshop.  For some reason I also had a copy of Photoshop Elements, which is Photoshop lite for those of us who can't afford to buy the full program and so I have been using that.  It's OK and I can do most of the stuff I need to do but there are things about the full program that I really, really miss.  

[I was also unable to get Front Page, the program I use to create Funny the World pages with, but my computer guru worked his magic and somehow got it running.]

I looks like you can't even buy a full Photoshop program any more.  Now you pay $20/month and essentially borrow it from the big program in the cloud (one of these days I'm going to have to figure out the cloud).  You can buy an old version of Photoshop an Amazon...a version which is probably significantly newer than the version I have, but it costs $2,000.

So for the past year, I have been using Photoshop Elements and every time I can't do something I used to do with the full Photoshop, I grieve all over again that I don't have it and consider checking out the rental options, but have not done that.  The problem is that the $20 option will include all the high tech options that I don't need and will never use.  I'm good at "making do" so am satisfied, if not exactly "happy" with Elements.

But there it was. Photoshop. A real program.  paid for!   Now I need to explain that I did not pay the big bucks for this.  At some point when Photoshop was about to start a whole new platform or something, for one brief shining moment, which I just happened to catch, this old, old version of the program was on sale for dirt cheap.  I don't think I even paid $200 for it.  It was actually the biggest accidental bargain I've ever found on the Internet...and when I bought it I wasn't 100% certain that I was getting  the legitimate program, but it was through Amazon, so I went ahead and bought it. 

It was the real deal.  And it worked like a charm.  I've missed it this past year.

I was surprised there wasn't some sort of magic music that accompanied my find.  No beams of light radiated out from the box, but my hands trembled somewhat as I held it.

I really wasn't going to even hope that it would work, but I put it into the computer.

It took forever to install.  I had to walk away from the computer.  Maybe it would crash my computer.

But finally it was installed and with fear and trepidation I started it up.

There I was at the registration screen where I had to put in my serial number.  I entered it.  It churned a bit while I held my breath.  Then it asked if I wanted to register or not now.  I chose not now and... the darn thing started!!!

So I'm back in business again.  Now I have to recreate all of the shortcuts I created when I had the old program.  I've missed those.  All the pre-programmed crop sizes that I was never able to do in Elements.  Some nice filters I made that I can't remember now, but they will come back to me.

It's going to take awhile before I actually believe this.  I'm even afraid to shut the program down for fear I will lose it again.  The first time I have to reboot the computer, I will die the death, hoping Photoshop will come back again.