Best way to deploy Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrated.

jgwatson
Contributor

Never deployed this before, but was wondering if someone else had. We have a lab of 10 machines, and the program needs to go on all of them.

Thanks so much.

21 REPLIES 21

thoule
Valued Contributor II

This app lets you build a pkg installer for Adobe CC products.

https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=5893&fileID=5927

You'll need an enterprise license. -t-

CapU
Contributor III

I use Creative Cloud Packager to assist in creating and serializing the packages so my users don't have to log in. This would cause a great many questions from staff and students. But I have 300 macs.

apanages
New Contributor

As mentioned already, use the Creative Cloud Packager to create the deployment packages where you are able to burn in the serial number and make some modifications such as do not deploy the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop App.

After you package all the Creative Cloud Apps you will realize that the package will be 12 or so gigs. Some users will deploy the 12gig package over the network but I have technicians do a manual install of the package since we only have around 30 users and the package takes some time to install.

Once Creative Cloud is installed on the Macs, I would suggest setting up an Adobe Update Server and using RUM to deploy updates to the Macs that have Creative Cloud installed.

Note: When using your Internal Adobe Update Server and RUM, it only downloads and deploys security/fix updates to the Creative Cloud Apps. If a CC App has a version change, then you must repackage and deploy. I found this out the hard way and ended up calling Adobe to confirm.

An example of this is: The version of Premier Pro CC that we installed on our Macs was 2015.2, the newest version out is 2015.3. The only way to get the new updated version on the mac is to repackage and deploy that new app update.

Another thing to keep in mind. When deploying a new App update such as Premier Pro CC it will keep the old version of the App installed so the user will see both 2015.2 and 2015.3 installed. You will then either have to manually uninstall the old version or script something. I called and talked to Adobe and they said this is how they created the install packages because users tend to want to keep both versions in case something is wrong with the newest one.

This has been months of researching, calling support, reaching out to JamfNation users, and banging my head on my desk to figure all this out that I just wrote in this post. Good luck!

blackholemac
Valued Contributor III

CCP is actually Adobe's preferred way to deploy by device CC licensing. Would highly recommend. Are you licensed for users or devices (I think they only license CC by device for k-12.) and only if you structure your subscription that way at time of purchase.

CapU
Contributor III

I use CCP to create the installer for one instructor. He refuses to be under IT umbrella so I created a 20GB installer just for him and his students. He actually goes to each machine and installs CC. Whatever, he must be padding his retirement fund.
I on the other hand break it into individual apps in CCP, upload to Casper then crate a policy to install whats needed in the lab. I then crated a policy to run updates from a script once a month. I didn't want to have to jump thru hoops and explain myself to the windows admins who run the servers as to why I want a server to keep Adobe updated when i can just run a script.

apanages
New Contributor

We decided to host our own Adobe Update Server so that we only had to hit the Adobe Server once for updates instead of each computer connecting to Adobe for updates. Yea I use a script also that has the Mac run the RUM that I have hidden on each mac which connects to our server and pulls down the updates and installs.

Shoesmithlc
New Contributor III

I swear by this

http://docs.jamfsoftware.com/technical-papers/casper-suite/adobe-creative-cloud/9.0/Deploying_Adobe_Creative_Cloud_for_Enterprise.html

Shoesmithlc
New Contributor III

@apanages

How do you manage the older version? Do you script them before or after installing the new one?

apanages
New Contributor

@KDE82 Thats the problem I am running into right now. I have two versions of Adobe Premier Pro on my Mac and Im trying to find the best method to remove the older one via terminal. I found a application called Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and you are suppose to be able to generate an XML file telling the file which applications you want it to remove via a Terminal command but I have not been able to get it to work. Still looking around for a solution for that.

Shoesmithlc
New Contributor III

@apanages Did you every find a way through JSS to clean up the Adobe CC?

Look
Valued Contributor III

Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool is pretty useless, it does get rid of any extra pieces that would hinder a reinstallation but it doesn't remove the actual applications themselves!
I tend to just nuke anything in the Applications folder starting with Adobe i.e. the very destructive

rm -rf /Applications/Adobe*
rm -rf /Applications/Utilities/Adobe*
"$Removal_Tool/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool" --removeAll=ALL

Then follow it up with Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner
It has potential to remove something unintended but it works :)
$Removal_Tool is the path to Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool.app

Shoesmithlc
New Contributor III

@Look what if they need to look back at later project? As example: CS5 or CS6. Does this command line just look at Adobe CC 2014-2017?

nigelg
Contributor

Creative Cloud packager creates uninstaller pkg files as well as installers. Make sure you save the uninstaller for anything you install that you might need to remove later. Not sure you can download old versions of Creative Cloud packager to recreate packages for older apps and therefore get their uninstallers so you need to save them first time round.

Look
Valued Contributor III

@KDE82 No it pretty much pulls anything! It's only going on name, but it is intended as nuke and redeploy, the reason I ended up with this is that Adobe installers have been so picky that I just found having anything left meant a high probability of failure and wasn't worth it. Plus our license no longer covered old versions anyway (except for a tiny fraction of individual licenses) so in general this served us well.

dmw3
Contributor III

@Look Where does the Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool.app hide, I have searched for this but coming up no results, obviously it is in the app/contents but which app?

Upgrading from Adobe 2015 to Adobe CC 2017 so wanting to automate the removal, I have been able to script some of this, but Adobe wants to put bits everywhere.

endor-moon
Contributor II

The Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool.app is a separate download. You can find the link with Google. The link is about halfway down this article:

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

I use Creative Cloud Packager and RUM but find it annoying that RUM doesn't install major updates like CC 2017.

And yes, I find the cleaner tool app to be relatively useless. I suggest safe boot, delete everything with Adobe in the name from /Applications and /Library/Application Support and anything with com.adobe in the name in /Library/LaunchAgents and /Library/LaunchDaemons.

But even that may miss a few things. Perhaps you can capture all the paths/files but installing CC while having Composer open to see where everything goes. I would be nice if someone could write an Adobe cleaner shell script that would stop all Adobe processes and remove everything.

Nix4Life
Valued Contributor

@endor-moon

Thanks for the input. I am looking at the cleaner tool today, what problems did you have when using it. How about a combo of The Cleaner tool and removing the mentioned directories? RUM was a good first attempt, but it does need work. I decommissioned mine and migrated the box to an office 2016 internal caching server about 3 weeks ago

LS

discounteggroll
New Contributor III

have you guys checked out the "Create Uninstall Package" that I now see in Creative Cloud Packager? It lets you pick and choose which app(s) and version(s) to remove

Nix4Life
Valued Contributor

@discounteggroll I just updated CCP and see this option now. Have you had any sucess?

Larry

discounteggroll
New Contributor III

just saw it today, but I have a bunch of users with older redundant instances that I will try it out on

discounteggroll
New Contributor III

ok so it creates a unix executable that needs to be run in terminal. Any input on how to package this up as a pkg to distribute?