Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Activation

Elements 8 brings a new wrinkle to installation: activation. That's a process where Elements collects information about the computer you install it on and sends that to Adobe. Your installations are physically tied to the computers Adobe knows about. For Elements, you can install your copy on two different computers. If you want to install it on a third computer, you have to deactivate it on one of the first two before you can do that. This is a change from earlier versions of Elements, where your license to use the program had the same restrictions but Adobe didn't do anything to keep you from installing Elements on 20 computers.

You don't have to register Elements (the benefits of registering include free space on Photoshop.com and a record of your serial number [see Photoshop.com]), but you do need to activate it. The good news is that you don't have to do anything special to activate Elements—just let the program go online at least once. If you don't normally allow your computer online or you have a firewall that blocks outgoing connections, you need to make sure that Elements can connect or the program will stop working after 30 days. To check whether your activation was successful, go to Editor → Help and you should see a Deactivate menu item.

You can run Elements for a while without activating it, but it just runs as a trial, and when the 30 days are up, that's it unless you activate it. If you uninstall Elements, remember to deactivate it first. In the Editor, go ...