Adobe Photoshop CS5: Running in 32-bit Mode

Posted on: March 7th, 2011Author: barb.binderCategory: Adobe Photoshop

by Barb Binder

In the past few weeks, I learned three important things about running Adobe Photoshop CS5 in 32-bit mode:

1. It is very important to Adobe that their Adobe Photoshop CS5 Certified Instructors know how to tell people how to run Photoshop in 64-bit and 32-bit modes (my tip was that it was featured prominently on the ACE exam bulletin)… because…
2. some of the CS4 and earlier plug-ins only run in 32-bit mode and,
3. users can’t figure out how to do it, and need some help.

Adobe sure saw that one coming. I’m glad I had the heads up before the questions started rolling in!

If you’re running Photoshop CS5 on Mac OS

1. Close Adobe Photoshop CS5
2. Open Finder
3. Click Applications in the sidebar
4. Open the Adobe Photoshop CS5 folder
5. Control+click the Adobe Photoshop CS5.app and choose Get Info from the context menu:

   

6. Check the command to run in 32-bit mode:

   

7. Close the window and restart Photoshop, and you will be running in 32-bit mode.
8. Use the same steps above to put Photoshop back into 64-bit mode (but uncheck Open in 32-bit mode, of course!).

If you’re running Photoshop CS5 on Windows

Photoshop installs a 32-bit and a 64-bit shortcut into the Start Menu. If you need to manually run the application, the 32-bit version is the photoshop.exe file, in the Program Files (x86)/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS5 folder, and the 64-bit version is the photoshop.exe file in the Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS5 folder.