Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac: The Missing Manual

Appendix B. Installation and Troubleshooting

Elements is easy to install and is pretty trouble free once it’s up and running. This appendix explains a couple of things you can do to ensure that your installation goes smoothly, and also provides cures for most of the glitches that can crop up once you’re using the program.

Installing Elements

There’s not much you need to do prior to installing Elements, but if you have any antivirus software or any Norton/Symantec products, you should disable those before you start. (Remember to turn them on again when you’re through installing Elements.)

You need to install Elements from an administrative user account. (If you have only one user account on your Mac, you’re an administrator. To double-check your status, go to → System Preferences → Accounts, and make sure the “Allow user to administer this computer” checkbox is turned on.) Elements won’t install (nor run well) from accounts without administrative powers.

You don’t have to remove previous versions of Elements to install Elements 8, and the installer won’t remove them for you, even if you do want to get rid of them. Each version of Elements is a separate, standalone program, and you can have as many versions as you like on one computer. You can even run them simultaneously, provided you launch the older version(s) before the newer one(s). (If you have Leopard—OS X 10.5—Elements 3 is the ...