No, it isn't. There are a lot of components that are in no way required for Photoshop to do its job; most of the components listed in http://forums.adobe.com/message/4491237 contribute nothing to Photoshop itself. If you can back up the statement that it is a terrible idea, please do, because that would be valuable information. I've been stripping the Photoshop installer so that it doesn't install cruft for many versions now, and every time someone who doesn't work at Adobe jumps in and goes "you need everything!" without even knowing what is being installed, or how it contributes to Photoshop functioning or not.

Statements along the lines of "you shouldn't" are welcome, but only if they are accompanied with an expert's explanation of why that might be.

That's fine, Photoshop updates tend to apply to the suite infrastructure rather than Photoshop itself, so I've had very little reason to upgrade Photoshop itself in the past. I can probably live with having the updater complain or simply not working.

My problem is not that I don't have enough general space available. I actually have 4TB on non-SSD disks that are used for file storage and swap space, and 12GB of ram acting as a ramdisk for working space. I could create a junction and install PS on one of the bigger disks and have it load into the ramdisk on start up, but that doesn't solve the problem at hand, it just creates a workaround situation that pretends the original problem is not important, which to me it very much is.

Photoshop requires a huge amount of space because it installs an amazing number of applications that have nothing to do with Photoshop as a stand-alone application, without so much as a hint that it will be installing these things, pretending they're all "Photoshop" in the installer. I don't like programs that install things I never asked for -- to me this is the same as some application installing an IE toolbar: I don't want that nonsense on my computer. And in this case the problem is compounded by the fact that this application's mystery meat doesn't take up a few megs, but takes up at least a gig of disk space on my small, very fast, system disk.

So while the thought is appreciated, I'm really only interested in information on how to do a custom install or, failing that, safely (and completely) remove components that are not required for Photoshop to run as a stand-alone application.

I'm afraid that that's not a bottom line I'll buy unless someone from the installer team looks in and goes "he's right, we didn't bake that option in anywhere".

As for the hackery type people, I'm actually one of those. While I'm waiting for someone to weigh in with authoritative information, I'm still in the process of punching down the install the not-sanctioned way, although unlike some of the other hackery type people, I have no intention of giving others my files (although I will happily tell them how to do the same to their own legal copy of PS). That said, it might very well be that there's actually an install flag that we're just not being told about, for use by (say) IT administrators to effect specific silent installation profiles. Or there might be a set of simple SQL queries that can be executed on Media_db.db (which is just a sqlite 3 database file, and you can inspect yourself with something as simple as a firefox SQLite manager extension) that doesn't lead to the installer complaining that it's been tampered with.

So, I appreciate the good intentions, but "it cannot be done" is basically speculation. I don't know if it can be done... it certainly seems like it can't be done, but I don't know that it can't be done, and that's why I'm asking. Unless you work for Adobe and have knowledge of the installer packaging process, it is quite likely that you don't know this either, although you probably share my suspicion that it can't be done (through normal means).

Let's hope someone who does know can answer this one =D

If you know this for a fact, because you worked on this as an Adobe employee, I will happily thank you, because that's the answer I'm looking for (or at least, one of the two possible ones).

However, your profile does not mention you're an Adobe employee, so as far as I can tell, you're just some guy like me. Since I have no authority to make claims about the installer that comes with CS6, I'm certainly not going to trust someone else unless their profile says they're with Adobe. I asked this question for CS5 about two years ago, and got the help from Eric Wilde. That's the kind of thing I'd like to have happen this time round.

I'd also like to keep this thread clear of mockery. I asked a question, you didn't have the answer (just a speculation, which in this specific case is not good enough). Perhaps someone else does. Perhaps whoever does, will never see this thread (too bad for me). Perhaps no one does (again, too bad for me). Or, perhaps they will see this thread, and they'll post a definitive answer to the question.

And if the execs don't like the installer team, that's okay. They're not really the kind of people that bother with reading forums =)

For prospective future posters: please try to keep replies on point. If I don't like your answer, it's either because it's not the answer to the original question, or it lacks authority to underline the answer. Not because I don't like you. I just want this question answered, not guessed at. Unless you're an expert debugger and analysed the installer and found no path branching based on flags or something. Then, of course, you have a pretty good basis to say "it can't be done the normal way" =)

No, really. When I say "How do I uninstall all the things that Photoshop CS6 installs? I don't see a "custom" or "advanced" installer option, but it puts all kinds of things on my computer that I do not want", that's literally what I mean. Even if I had a 500GB SSD, I still want to know how I either a) make the install not install most of the crap that it secretly installs or b) remove all the components post install again in a way that is equivalent to them never having been installed.

I know that last bit makes it look like I'm asking the wrong question, because it might seem like my real motivation is "I don't have enough space". That is not the case, and if I could remove it from the original post I would, since it seems to be throwing you off.

If possible, please remove your reply (or edit it to empty) since it's now kind of hijacked the thread's topic. While extremely useful information in other threads, if someone finds this thread through google or another web search, they expect to find information how to uninstall the things CS6 drops onto their disk that they didn't get the choose during installation. Perhaps even a way to make the installer not ever drop those files onto the disk. Information that details how you should just get more disk space and install the full thing anyway is not useful in this thread.

I appreciate you trying to help, but I asked this question to get an answer from Adobe to the only question in my post, because they no longer do unpaid customer support. This is my only recourse, and I am only interested in finding an answer to the originally posed question.

No, that's a fair question Curt, just with the wrong monetary figures: I spent $199 on a program that I like to use, but I'd like to not be forced into installing all the $0 freebies that come with it for Adobe's (not my) convenience. If I bought the entire creative suite, I would definitely want all these extras installed. Application interoperability and workflow streamlining is great. But not when I only want one program, without any suite, and without the infrastructure placed "in case I want more programs later". In the same vein, I wouldn't want to be given an entire garage if I just want a car. Maybe if I buy more cars. And then as my choice, not the car salesman's.

As for trying Gimp, I keep coming back to it every now and then to see if it's usable enough yet for someone used to Photoshop, but the lack of a master window (still) is frustrating enough to keep driving me back. It's the same reason I don't like Acorn or Piant.net other free image editors of varying levels of serious image editing. Gimp is damn powerful, but its UX clashes with how I use every other program during my workflow. I remember there used to be a GimpShop wrapper, which kind worked as a half-remedy that (it wasn't very polished), but it got abandoned quite a few years ago.

Photoshop's fully worth the $199 I payed for it, and Bridge etc is fully worth the added value when working with a full creative suite. It's forcing all the programs for (2) when I just want (1) that gets my goat. It's the part where "I just want to use Photoshop" gets polluted with "No, no, let us stick 1GB of not-photoshop freebies on your disk, you know, just in case" that extremely bothers me. It's my computer, I'd really like to be offered the choice of what to install, even if you would personally install more things because you use more Adobe programs. (Maybe I'm too European. When a company sells us a product but then over the next few versions keeps taking away choices untill all we're left with is "install everything" or "cancel", we get upset)

But, that's the road they've gone down on, so now I'm looking for ways to mitigate; ideally, at the installer level (from what I can tell at the moment, the only thing standing in the way of getting full custom install control back is getting the right checksum and sig values for the Media_db.db file. Without it, you get to pick all the components, but then once you actually hit install, the installer will refuse to land files because it's been tampered with =).

Noel, think of it as an exercise in "this is my machine, I want to control what lands on it". I don't know about bokeron2008, but I installed a full copy of PS on day one - I'm not paying $199 for something to just sit on an install disk/in a .7z file, obviously. That doesn't mean that I don't want to find out how to get rid of it and reinstall it leaner and cleaner next time I need to (say, after a format, or losing a disk. Both not unusual occurrences). Manually pruning components properly is nice (as long as it's properly, not 'deleting files and leaving registry entries and soft dendencies'), but not ever having the files land on the HD is much, much nicer. I did this for previous versions too, installing the full version, while figuring out how to make the install process give me choice, then zipping up that "prepared" version for future installs. It's served me well so far.

The problem is choice. Adobe's taken it away, and I don't like it. The old Photoshop installers that I know, from version 5 all the way up to CS2, allowed us to pick what we wanted to install. When CS3 came around, Adobe suddenly decided to hide some of the components. However, you could make them show up in with pretty much minimal effort. With CS4 they made it a little harder, but making them show up again was still only a few minutes work. When CS5 rolled out, they pulled a fast one on customers in a way that made you wonder whether they even cared about "customers" anymore, or whether they just cared about bait-and-switch, getting people who liked CS4 to fork over the cash without telling them they gimped the installer up front. That was sneaky. It was a lot of work to make CS5 do what all previous versions had always been able to do.

Now with CS6, they topped themselves by adding online login requirements during the install process, and a self-validating installer. These are measures you put in to prevent piracy. Ten years ago. Anyone working in IT can tell you, or point you to a plethora of websites that will tell you, that these measures don't work (why yes, I believe I do see at least ten torrents for CS6 on the pirate bay) and yet they've put them in, thus cause grief only to customers who were willing to pay between $200 and $2000 for their product. This just plain stupid, and I'll be damned if I don't give defeating the man a try. You don't get to take away my choice without me trying to jank it right back =)

I've been using Photoshop since version not-CS 5, and I've seen Adobe adding more and more silly things to the installer, and removing more and more choice, as time's gone by. You can deal with that in two ways. Either you accept that this is the face of Adobe, go with the flow, install CS6 afull, and not worry about it. You have the space, why would you care. That's perfectly fine, I have no business telling you how you should use your computer. But you can also be like me (and presumable bokeron2008) and install CS6 afull, and then keep trying to get back the control that Adobe took away. I would expect you to consider this as perfectly fine behaviour as I consider yours. And I'll happily listen to your solution, and tell others that it's a pretty good solution, as long as you don't tell me that you have determined that what I want, is not what I want, and that what I "really" want is somthing that YOU want me to want (okay that's possibly too many wants, but they're necessary to make a point - I asked a question, you gave me what I didn't feel was an answer, I told you I wanted an answer to a different question you were answer, followed by you basically telling me that I don't know what I want and now you're going to tell me what I should be wanting instead, all but adding a "shut up and pay attention".

I can sort of see why you would, but it's still just not nice. When you ask a forum question in a forum that Adobe says is the official channel for getting Adobe help short of paying a ludicrous amount of money for support, you don't expect people to shoot your question down because the person replying doesn't understand why you'd want to do what you say you want to do. So that's the only problem I had with your replies.

Back to the actual issue: if you're happy with manually pruning components every time you install CS6, that's great. You have more patience than I do in the long run, probably. I'm more the kind of person who will bear being frustrated the first time right to the degree that I spend a silly amount of time figuring out how to never have to spend time on something again. If I have to install Photoshop a few times over the next two years, and I can pretty much guarantee I will, since OS reinstalls happen, HDs die, and a new laptop may be bought, I don't want to have to prune the install every time. Unless I absolutely have to, of course, which I won't accept as the definitive approach unless I've been convinced there is no alternative. As it stands, no one's actually showed up to definitively tell me one way or the other. I actually do appreciate the help, and if you still want to explain how to manually uninstall all the components I listed earlier after a full install: awesome! You are a fantastic guy.

Bill, I used to love the goodies, and used to dig through the discs to find and install each and every one of them, too, all the way until they started turning the goodies into "essential" software dependencies. I didn't like Bridge, not because it wasn't useful, but because it started to force an Adobe-only workflow. My job, my computers, so my philosophy was (and still is) I damn well decide which program talks to which other program. Frankly, if they just made the installer fully opt-in and opt-out for every component, I might even install most of those components because if I can just uninstall them if it turns out I don't like them, the official way. There wouldn't be a reason not to at least try them. Adobe's taken that away from me as paying customer as of CS5, even though the software pirates get to customise as much as they like. Downside of using an outdated copyright protection scheme =(

bokeron2008: the trick does indeed seem to be finding out which checksum and signature hash Adobe uses for the Media_db.db file - I tried making it load a modified Media_db.db (same deal, simply replaced all critical and required with recommended) when the installer starts up, and then swapping the original Media_db.db file back in once the installer's running, in the hopes of tricking it into checking the hashes from the .sig file against the file on disk, but then the installer won't actualy do anything after you select only the components you want and clicking "next". The button's clickable, but doesn't do anything =)

I don't recognise the hash print as being any of the common hashing algorithms, so unless someone from Adobe chips in on how it's generated, it might take a while until we find out how to generate them for a modified Media_db.db (if we ever do).

If anyone else knows: chip in!

See, I don't get this. Why the hate on what *I* want to do, just because *you* don't want to do the same? Noel: it's my time to waste, why would that even remote get your goat? And Bill, I don't see how spending some of my own free time, like when I'm not actually on the job, to investigate? It's my free time, right?

To both of you: I have no idea where you're getting your preconceptions, but I'm not spending 24/7 trying to hack the tools I use. So far this has taken up an hour or two on the weekend while doing other things at the same time, plus the time required to write posts on this thread. If I'm wasting time on that, then I'm going to have to point out you seem to be spending as much time on this as I am, which makes accusing me of wasting time... hypocritical? I have nothing against you, but you seem pretty damn judgemental about something that REALLY doesn't affect your lives in any way. I want to find an answer that for previous versions of CS is known to exist, maybe someone on this forum has it. Don't have it? Maybe, at this point, just say you don't have it and don't care to find out, and move on?

<<It's probably all moot...  Adobe isn't participating in this thread, and I doubt they will.>>

And there we go again with the "I know better than you". Did you know that when I asked this question about CS5, Adobe employees jumped in, on this forum, to help find out? Did we resolve it? No. Did Adobe participate? Very much so. Did that make it worth posting here? Definitely. Did that back up Adobe's own, official claim that help requests should go to this forum, that they run? Yes, it did. Are you making it seem like this is just a pointless forum that no one should use because Adobe's not involved? Hell yes (why are you doing that?). Are you running this forum? I kind of doubt that, so please: don't claim to know these things. Yeah, we don't see a lot of Adobe employees jumping onto threads. That's not a surprise because a lot of questions are questions that forum members can answer just fine. At times, that's not the case, and you will see one or more Adobe employees pitch in. I initially had the hope that this would happen again here. If I read this thread at this point as an Adobe employee, I'd laugh at what a trainwreck it's become, and just move on.

You know what? Maybe someone out there already has the answer, but doesn't use this forum. Maybe they do, but they've seen this thread become a trainwreck and don't want to respond anymore. Both of those would be a shame, but none of us knows. Someone might surprise the world yet, and give the answer. I'm still hoping that happens.