can I give away Elements 11 since I have Elements 12?

As long as you didn't use it to qualify for upgrade pricing, sure.

Ah, but what if it was used for an upgrade? Can it still be used by the original owner? Can it be given away and used by someone else? Can it be sold?

My assumption has always been that once it was used for an upgrade it no longer has a valid serial number and that was the hidden cost of upgrading, but is that correct? There was a bit of a discussion about this at Elements Village but I don't think there was any final determination.

MikeFromMesa wrote:

 

Ah, but what if it was used for an upgrade? Can it still be used by the original owner?

Yes, but only on the same computer on which PSE12 is installed.

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/legal/licenses-terms/pdf/CC_ EULA_Gen_WWCombined-MULTI-2012…

Can it be given away and used by someone else? Can it be sold?

Yes but if you do that you will not be able to run your PSE12 upgrade since the PSE11 serial number is required for your PSE12 upgrade to be valid.

Transfer an Adobe product license

In short, your PSE12 upgrade still requires you to retain your PSE11.

 

My assumption has always been that once it was used for an upgrade it no longer has a valid serial number and that was the hidden cost of upgrading, but is that correct?

No, not at all.

Your PSE11 serial number is still valid and PSE11 can still be used, even when you have PSE12 installed.

An upgrade merely upgrades an existing license to a new version. But you still only have one license. If you own PSE1 and upgrade to PSE2, 3 etc all the way to PSE13 then you still have only one license (with two activations of the software).

As you can see from clause 5 of the EULA above, your use of your PSE12 upgrade is conditional upon you retaining PSE11.

• If you ever sell or give away your PSE11 then you cannot use your PSE12 upgrade. You'd have to buy a new full version of PSE13 (since 12 is no longer sold by Adobe).
• If you ever sell or give away your PSE12, then you must also include PSE11 (being a Prior Version of the software) in the transaction.

Well, live and learn. I guess I was both right and wrong. I assumed that if you used a version to upgrade, then you could not sell or give away the old version and still use the new one and apparently that is correct. But I also assumed that the previous version was no longer usable at all, and apparently that is wrong.

Raises the question for me as to whether I could use Elements 12 on the Windows partition of my Mac (run under Parallels) and 13 on the Mac portion. It is the same physical computer but Windows runs under a VM and theoretically it would be possible to have both versions running simultaneously. I don't need to do it, of course, but working as a software engineer for all of those years prior to my retirement makes me ask questions like that.

Raises the question for me as to whether I could use Elements 12 on the Windows partition of my Mac (run under Parallels) and 13 on the Mac portion.

Yes, that should be possible since the Elements serial number is usually multi-platform (works on both Mac and Windows) depending on how it was purchased.

John Waller:

The question was not whether or not it was physically possible to run Elements 12 on Windows under Parallels and Elements 13 on the Mac side on my MacBook Pro. My version of Elements 12 was purchased on a disc and includes both Windows and Mac versions. Rather, it was a question as to whether or not Adobe would allow me to do so.

Basically the question is whether or not Windows, running under Parallels and in a separate VM from OS X on the Mac, is the "same computer" or not. That is, would Adobe consider that configuration, with both Windows and OS X running simultaneously, to be one computer or two.