Hacksar

If you’ve ever found yourself on a computer that doesn’t belong to you, you’ve probably had the lost feeling of not having all of your favorite programs at your fingertips. If you are trying to work with images, Microsoft Paint just doesn’t cut it; you need the real powerhouse of image editors: Photoshop. You have the software at home, but that may not mean you have it on every computer. Also, you most likely don’t have administrator priviledges on this alien computer, so you can’t even install your own copy of… whatever.

That’s where Portable Apps come in. For those of you wondering what a Portable App is, let me just say, they are one of the best creations for all computers. A portable application is a program that has the ability to run straight from one file, without any installation. They can even be run directly off of a USB flash drive, eliminating all needs for installation and admin rights.

Now, you may recall that Adobe’s Photoshop CS3 is not only a powerhouse image editing program, but the full installed version runs at a whopping  MB. So, you may think that you can never use this wonderful piece of software on any computer other than where it’s natively installed. Guess again. Keep reading to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop CS3 as a portable application straight from your flash drive, with no installation required.

1. Download and unarchive Portable Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Link Removed due to Legality issues, but a very quick Google will find you tons of download links).
2. Copy that folder to where ever you want. You can keep it on your computer for the fastest version, but the true magic lies in the fact that you can copy this folder to your flash drive and run Photoshop on any computer straight from your flash drive.
3. It is suggested that you put the files on your flash drive, and whenever you need to use it on a computer, copy the folder from your flash drive into some temporary place on the computer’s hard drive (Desktop, etc) to get the fastest speeds. This is especially important if you have a slow flash drive. (If you don’t know if you have a slow or fast flash drive, use this as a benchmark: if copying the CS3 folder to your flash drive takes over 2 minutes, it can be considered “slow”.)
4. To actually run the Photoshop, just double click on Photoshop.exe found within the folder and wait. It will eventually load and you can do everything that regular Photoshop CS3 could do.

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