[ender]

The Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 installer causes errors that may prevent the application from working properly in Mac OSX. The bug appears for non-administrator account users. Some discussion board posts say that Adobe's solution is to only run PE from an admin account. This is a foolish suggestion as even many single user computers are normally run as under non-admin accounts for the extra safety it provides, both from external threats and user error. And in a multi-user environment, there are normally several non-admin users. (Or perhaps Adobe would allow my 12-year old daughter to sit down at one of their corporate computers with admin access?)

There are solutions posted on various message boards on the internet. However, many of these suggestions involve doing a massive, recursive ownership change of the PSE application and help application packages. This is akin to killing a bug with a hand grenade...you'll squash the bug, but may potentially cause much collateral damage. Changing the ownership permissions will allow PSE to run in a non-admin account, but only for ONE non-admin user. And it opens the application up to accidental modification which could render the application inoperable.

Below are the steps I used to make PSE operational for ALL non-admin users, making only minimal changes to permissions for a minimal number of files and directories rather than altering the entire application packages. I've also listed the explanation for each step for those curious. Please note that these steps are based on the hard work of others who identified the problems with Adobe's installation and proposed solutions. I just refined their techniques and applied them only to the specific files which seem to be causing the problems.

1. Log into the admin account
2. Install PSE3 as you would any application

If the Adobe installer had set things up properly this would be all you needed to do. If you will only be running PSE under an admin account, you can stop here. But if anyone logs into your computer as a non-admin, do the following steps.

3. Launch PSE

This will set-up/initialize certain files and/or directories. If you do not launch PSE at least once as admin, it will not launch for a non-admin user.

4. From the Help menu select "Photoshop Elements Help"
5. In Help, click on the Index tab and then drill down and select a help topic (any topic will do)
6. In Help, click on the Glossary tab and drill down and select a glossary term (again, any topic)

This will set up two directories ("page" and "glossary") where help topic and glossary files are stored as they are accessed. These help files are compressed, and the first time a topic or term is accessed, the page is decompressed and stored in these folders for future use. However, as created, these folders are not writable for non-admin users. Therefore, the only items available to non-admin users will be those previously viewed (and therefore created) by an admin user. To fix this, you must use the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) to change the permissions on two directories as root/superuser (via the sudo command).

7. In Terminal, enter:
sudo chmod o+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PhotoshopElementsHelp/en_US/Cache/57/3.0/en_US/html/page"

You will be asked for your password before the command is executed. This will add write privileges for others (ie, non-admin users), via the "o+w" portion of the command, for non-admin users to access the "page" directory where help topic files are stored.

8. In Terminal, enter:
sudo chmod o+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PhotoshopElementsHelp/en_US/Cache/57/3.0/en_US/html/glossary"

Which will also make the "glossary" directory available to non-admin users. Again you must enter your password.

9. In Terminal, enter:
chmod o+rw "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Elements 3/Photoshop Elements Help.app/Contents/MacOS/Opera.app/Contents/Resources/Styles/browser.css"

10. In Terminal, enter:
chmod o+rw "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Elements 3/Photoshop Elements Help.app/Contents/MacOS/Opera.app/Contents/Resources/Styles/user.css"

These two files ("browser.css" and "user.css") are also required for the Help application to function properly. They are created by the installer, but their permissions are incorrectly set and do not allow non-admin users to access them.

11. In Terminal, enter:
sudo chmod o+x "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Elements 3/Photoshop Elements Help.app/Contents/MacOS/Photoshop Elements Help"

Enter your password when prompted. This will allow non-admin users execute (o+x) a Unix executable file ("Photoshop Elements Help") which is needed when you try to launch the help system. Without this you will get an error when trying to access the Help from within PSE.

You should now have a fully functioning Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Elements Help which will work for all users. It's possible there are additional files that need to have their permissions modified to work properly. There are two additional Unix executable files which can not be run by non-admin users, but so far I have not run into any problems, so I have not modified their permissions. Post any modifications to these steps which you think would contribute and help other users.

And one final step:

12. Go to http://www.adobe.com/misc/bugreport.html and provide your customer feedback on Adobe's inept installer for Photoshop Elements

All of this hassle could have been avoided if the installer would simply decompress all the help files during installation (since a non-admin user should not have write access to these directories in the first place) and then properly set the permissions on three files ("user.css", "browser.css", and the "Photoshop Elements Help" Unix executable).

Good luck!!

[janmattijs]

Thank you so much, ender, this works and seems less drastic thant the fixes proposed on the Adobe forums (through which I arrived here).

However, I had to make some minor modifications as my (french) localizd version uses slightly different folder names. On some paths of the fix above, you have to substitute fr_FR for en_US. I suppose other localizations use other language codes, you can find them out just by browsing the path with the finder.
The first two Terminal commands become:
sudo chmod o+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PhotoshopElementsHelp/fr_FR/Cache/57/3.0/fr_FR/html/page"

sudo chmod o+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PhotoshopElementsHelp/fr_FR/Cache/57/3.0/fr_FR/html/glossary"
I chose to also modify the permissions on a remaining /3.0/en_US/ directory, since the localized version has both sets of directories:
sudo chmod o+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PhotoshopElementsHelp/fr_FR/Cache/57/3.0/en_US/html/page"

The other commands (steps 9-11 above) are unaffected by language. I hope the poor souls that buy a localized version because they dont speak english can find a french explanation on a forum somewhere, and Adobe deserves a bad mark for sloppy engineering and lack of support. A simple patch could take care of this - but also has to take account of possible localizations...

Jan

[ender]

Jan, thanks for the additional suggestions. I was digging through so many directories and files looking for the culprits that I didn't stop to think about language localizations. Please forgive my unworldly perspective!

[USNA91]

You have no idea how happy I am my installation went flawlessly....


If I tried to understand all that, I'd look like this in real life:

[fredbillie]

Originally posted by ender:
The Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 installer causes errors that may prevent the application from working properly in Mac OSX. The bug appears for non-administrator account users. Some discussion board posts say that Adobe's solution is to only run PE from an admin account. This is a foolish suggestion as even many single user computers are normally run as under non-admin accounts for the extra safety it provides, both from external threats and user error. And in a multi-user environment, there are normally several non-admin users. (Or perhaps Adobe would allow my 12-year old daughter to sit down at one of their corporate computers with admin access?)

There are solutions posted on various message boards on the internet. However, many of these suggestions involve doing a massive, recursive ownership change of the PSE application and help application packages. This is akin to killing a bug with a hand grenade...you'll squash the bug, but may potentially cause much collateral damage. Changing the ownership permissions will allow PSE to run in a non-admin account, but only for ONE non-admin user. And it opens the application up to accidental modification which could render the application inoperable.

Below are the steps I used to make PSE operational for ALL non-admin users, making only minimal changes to permissions for a minimal number of files and directories rather than altering the entire application packages. I've also listed the explanation for each step for those curious. Please note that these steps are based on the hard work of others who identified the problems with Adobe's installation and proposed solutions. I just refined their techniques and applied them only to the specific files which seem to be causing the problems.

1. Log into the admin account
2. Install PSE3 as you would any application

If the Adobe installer had set things up properly this would be all you needed to do. If you will only be running PSE under an admin account, you can stop here. But if anyone logs into your computer as a non-admin, do the following steps.

3. Launch PSE

This will set-up/initialize certain files and/or directories. If you do not launch PSE at least once as admin, it will not launch for a non-admin user.

4. From the Help menu select "Photoshop Elements Help"
5. In Help, click on the Index tab and then drill down and select a help topic (any topic will do)
6. In Help, click on the Glossary tab and drill down and select a glossary term (again, any topic)

This will set up two directories ("page" and "glossary") where help topic and glossary files are stored as they are accessed. These help files are compressed, and the first time a topic or term is accessed, the page is decompressed and stored in these folders for future use. However, as created, these folders are not writable for non-admin users. Therefore, the only items available to non-admin users will be those previously viewed (and therefore created) by an admin user. To fix this, you must use the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) to change the permissions on two directories as root/superuser (via the sudo command).

7. In Terminal, enter:
sudo chmod o+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PhotoshopElementsHelp/en_US/Cache/57/3.0/en_US/html/page"

You will be asked for your password before the command is executed. This will add write privileges for others (ie, non-admin users), via the "o+w" portion of the command, for non-admin users to access the "page" directory where help topic files are stored.

8. In Terminal, enter:
sudo chmod o+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/PhotoshopElementsHelp/en_US/Cache/57/3.0/en_US/html/glossary"

Which will also make the "glossary" directory available to non-admin users. Again you must enter your password.

9. In Terminal, enter:
chmod o+rw "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Elements 3/Photoshop Elements Help.app/Contents/MacOS/Opera.app/Contents/Resources/Styles/browser.css"

10. In Terminal, enter:
chmod o+rw "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Elements 3/Photoshop Elements Help.app/Contents/MacOS/Opera.app/Contents/Resources/Styles/user.css"

These two files ("browser.css" and "user.css") are also required for the Help application to function properly. They are created by the installer, but their permissions are incorrectly set and do not allow non-admin users to access them.

11. In Terminal, enter:
sudo chmod o+x "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Elements 3/Photoshop Elements Help.app/Contents/MacOS/Photoshop Elements Help"

Enter your password when prompted. This will allow non-admin users execute (o+x) a Unix executable file ("Photoshop Elements Help") which is needed when you try to launch the help system. Without this you will get an error when trying to access the Help from within PSE.

You should now have a fully functioning Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Elements Help which will work for all users. It's possible there are additional files that need to have their permissions modified to work properly. There are two additional Unix executable files which can not be run by non-admin users, but so far I have not run into any problems, so I have not modified their permissions. Post any modifications to these steps which you think would contribute and help other users.

And one final step:

12. Go to http://www.adobe.com/misc/bugreport.html and provide your customer feedback on Adobe's inept installer for Photoshop Elements

All of this hassle could have been avoided if the installer would simply decompress all the help files during installation (since a non-admin user should not have write access to these directories in the first place) and then properly set the permissions on three files ("user.css", "browser.css", and the "Photoshop Elements Help" Unix executable).

Good luck!!

[fredbillie]

re the solution to PSE 3 installation problems. My installation worked fine (at least I thought it did) but the program quit when a blank message popped up. I finally discovered (by logging in as �root�)that the problem was that the message required that type smoothing be turned off for fonts 8 Points or smaller. After I took care of that problem I found that the program just quit after running for about one minute (even though no action was taken on my part). In trying to solve the latter problem I must have mucked up something to do with �color selections� or the like (discovered that only logged on as �root�) because PSE 3 now wouldn�t even load fully. Is my problems related to the signing on with admin privileges? Because I believe I have those or is �Root� the same as signing on with admin privileges?

Adobe has not replied to 4 E-mails asking for help. Do you suggest I follow the procedures described in the extensive �solution� recommended by ender?
I apologize for a quote of ender�s long explanation. Being totally unaccustomed the format of this Forum, I clicked on �Submit� rather than �Post Reply�

[ender]

Logging in as admin is not the same as logging in as root. If you are using the very first account you set up when you got your Mac, in all likelihood you are logged in as an admin user. If that is the case, then you can pretty much ignore my instructions. They only apply if you want to run Photoshop Elements from a non-admin account. For example, my daughter's account is non-admin so that she cannot accidentally do things she should not.

It does not sound like your problem is the same as the permissions/installation problem for non-admin users. I did not see anyone else talk about such problems when I was researching the internet leading up to my set of [admittedly long] directions. You could be experiencing anything from corrupted fonts, other permissions problems, a bad disk, etc.

A couple of general troubleshooting tips you might try:

1. Run Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities), select your disk, and then click the "Repair Permissions" button under one of the tabs in Disk Utility. This is something you should do every so often in any event.

2. Find and delete the PSE preferences file. I believe the file is com.adobe.Photoshop.Elements.plist (look in your home directory under Library > Preferences, I think). The application should recreate the file the next time you run it.

3. Find and remove all traces of Photoshop Elements from your hard drive and reinstall (I don't recall if there is an "uninstall" option on the installation disk PSE comes one).

Beyond that, I won't be of much help...I was pushing my knowledge to the limit with my original post!!

[nadelewi]

Ender:

I've tried your fix twice on two different computers. Neither worked. I'm being VERY careful in entering the commands. Is there some syntax missing? I'm not being asked for a password everywhere you say. Is "sudo" needed at beginnig of step 9 & 10?

I'm desperate to get this working. have to deploy a big bunch of new OS 10.3 machines with Photoshop Elements 3.

After your fix, still have problem of Help, Glossary and Tutorial not opening, and PE freezes entirely, requiring Force-Quit to get out of ptogram.

Thank you much.

Norm Adelewitz

[ender]

Norm,

I did not use sudo on 9 and 10. However, I THINK sudo stays into effect for a few minutes after you evoke it, so it may have been active from my last usage. A couple of things to consider:

- Are you getting error messages entering the commands? If not, they were executed.

- Does everything work under an admin account? If not, than it would seem there is something else wrong with your machine.

- Did you run all the apps under the admin account first (ie, steps 3-6)?

I can't think of anything else right now. If you were able to follow all the steps without error messages, perhaps there is something else going on.

[nadelewi]

Ender:

Thanks for the quick reply. I did not get error messages, as long as I didn't screw up the syntax.

Yes, I ran everything as admin first, and everything worked, and still does.

I'm going to keep trying. I have a bunch of computers I can do clean installs of PE 3 on to try it with.

The ironic thing is that with Photoshop Elements 2, Help, Glossary and Tutorial work for non-admin out of the box. Thanks a lot, Adobe.

Norm

[MILTON]

I seem to have almost exactly the same problems and the same partial fixes as those reporting difficulties with PSE 3. My wife's new Imac, 20 inches with 2 gig of RAM, 250 gif of a hard drive, running OS X.4.8, and with some Apple and non-Apple applications on it, was running fine for the month since we bought it. Each time we did an installation or an Apple software update, we verified and fixed permissions. We even successfully installed other Adobe software on my wife's user account, acting as her system administrator (perhaps at the heart of things).

Then I tried to install PSE 4 (newly purchased) on her user account--- and it didn't work, providing the same error several times: "... crashed unexpectedly" (this usually occurring near the very end of the installation process). After two hours (yes, two hours) with John of Adobe Technical Assistance, and using the Adobe Technote they sent me, containing about six strategies on how to avoid crashes and install it--- the best he could do was have me fix the font smoothing level (to eight points or less), AND get it to fully install--- but only on a newly created user account, not my wife's! (Yes, he also walked me through the root feature)

Now we have PSE4 available, but only after my wife logs out of her account, and logs into the new one, but we can't get to any images or files stored on her desktop or folders. The Tech Support fellow says "this happens from time to time" and that some preferences are interfering with installing PSE 4 on her user account. But which ones, as part of what software?

Anyone have any ways to fix this apparent user-specific problem?