Adobe Creative Cloud Licensing

Overview

Adobe is a central OSU license and the latest information will always be at the OTDI Adobe Portal: https://it.osu.edu/adobe.

Key Points:

  • As of January 31, 2025:
    • By default, only Acrobat Pro DC is available for employed Faculty, Staff and Graduate Students (GAA/GRA/GTA/Fellowship).
    • They get 2 Acrobat Pro DC licenses for OSU owned or personally owned machines.
    • Emeritus with a completed appointment also get access.
    • This does not include Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, etc., but will have the Creative Cloud Desktop app for updates/adding purchased add-ons.
  • Adobe Express is available to all Faculty, Staff, and Students.
    • This is OSU's recommended replacement, and supports PDF editing with online Acrobat.
    • There are also online analogues of other Creative Cloud products.
  • Teaching labs have a device based license that requires login, but that students can use for instructional purposes only.

Purchasing Full Suite Licenses:

Full information in this ARC article: https://admin.resources.osu.edu/software-support/licensing-users-to-use-adobe-creative-cloud but a summary:

  • Professional/Academic Use:
    • Full suite licenses are available for free.
    • The license period is August 1st to July 31st, and licenses will need renewed each year.
  • Personal Use:
    • For $36 OSU affiliates can purchase a subscription for personal use.
      • This is a great deal for a year of the full suite.
      • The license period is August 1st to July 31st, and licenses are not prorated, nor transferable.
    • Purchaser will fill out OTDI's ServiceNow form and select "Personal Use"
    • After checkout, email to a payment portal will arrive shortly.
      • If you do not pay within four hours, the order is cancelled.
    • More information is at https://it.osu.edu/adobe.

If you purchase a license and Adobe Products still say 'unlicensed':

Sometimes an existing install does not acknowlege an upgraded licecense.

This is fixable by doing a repair from the Adobe installer. Reach out to ASCTech for assistance if needed.

Contents

Alternatives to Adobe Software

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

Preview (MacOS), Edge (Windows), Firefox, and Chrome can all read PDF files and do basic form filling. Note: Firefox will often open PDFs that Preview, Chrome or Edge will not.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is also available for free, but should not be installed concurrently with Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe Creative Cloud should be the version installed on ASC owned devices.

Acrobat for iPad is also free, and does not count against the two machine installs, even if you login to it.

Photoshop

Snipping Tool on Windows and Photos on Macintosh offer basic markup and editing.

Gimp is a full featured, multi-layer image editor.

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud:

All new Macintosh and Windows deployments have Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop and Acrobat Pro DC installed.
The Adobe Desktop is launched from the infinity symbol in the task bar: 

If your machine was installed prior the new license, the easiest way is to install the Adobe Desktop application from Software Center (Windows) or Self Service (Macintosh).

  • On Macintosh, launch Self Service (Block O in Applications), and in Applications, install Adobe Creative Cloud, which will install Acrobat Pro DC and Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop.
  • On Windows, launch Software Center (search from the start menu), and in Applications under the Adobe Creative Cloud.
  • Note, the full suite is 20+ applications and will take a fair amount of space.

Logging into Adobe Creative Cloud

The Adobe License requires sign in, even just for Acrobat Pro DC.

  • Use your OSU lastname.#@osu.edu to sign in; the sign in requires Duo.
  • Each employee can have two active logins at a time.
    • The software can be installed on as many machines as desired, but you will be prompted to 'de-authorize' one of the two active logins.
      • The app will log you out of a machine, next time you log into it you'll just need to log in again.
        • You are given a list of machines to choose which one to log out of:
        • The log out is app dependant, so you can have Photoshop up on 2 computes and Acrobat Pro DC on different ones.
    • If you have purchased a personal copy, you can download personal machine copies here.

Other Information:

  • Adobe Desktop allows installs of any licensed Adobe Products on demand and automatically updates Adobe software.
  • Photoshop for iPad is included with the full license. It does not count against your 2 copies, but you do need to login to use it.
  • Logging out of Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop will deauthorize that device and deactivate all Adobe software that was installed using the app. To log out, click the menu bar app icon, then click the randomly generated user icon next to the three-dot menu in the upper-right, and select Sign Out. You can also view your Adobe Account details here by clicking Manage Account.
    • To reactivate, all that is required is logging in again which is quick.
    • If you want to remove all Adobe Creative Cloud software from your system, please see ASCTech support staff for assistance.
  • Each user gets 100GB of Adobe Creative Cloud storage; however, using OneDrive is recommended as storage is larger and files can be saved to Team shares in OneDrive.
    • Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop has a function called "Creative Cloud Sync" that automatically syncs files under a new user folder of the same name, from your computer to Adobe's servers. To disable this feature, click the ACCD app icon in the menu bar, then click the three-dot menu in the upper-right, and choose Preferences. Under Preferences, select the Creative Cloud tab, then the Files tab, and uncheck the "Creative Cloud Sync" box. This will disable the file sync feature for that given device.
If you had a personal account attached to your lastname.#@osu.edu, the login will allow you to chose which account to use. Select "Enterprise ID" to use the new license.

Installing Additional Adobe Apps and Prior Versions

By default, new machines come with Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop and Acrobat Pro DC.

Installing Additional Adobe Apps:

  1. Open Creative Cloud desktop (infinity symbol). 
  2. Click Apps.
  3. Scroll to the App you want.
  4. Click Install.

Installing prior versions of Creative Cloud apps with CC Desktop:

  1. Open Creative Cloud desktop (infinity symbol). 
  2. Click Apps.
  3. Scroll to the App you want.
  4. Click the small down arrow.
  5. Select Manage -> Other Versions.
  6. Pick the version you need for compatibility.
  7. There will be an arrow to the left of the product, select it for a drop down of all versions you have installed.
  8. Click on desired version to launch.

Note: Many prior versions are no longer available due to Adobe licensing.

ASCTech Technical Notes

If you have issues, please contact ASCTech.

We will be happy to check your access to Adobe Creative Cloud in our administrative console.

  • The Mac device version is available only in the Lab Site.
  • The Windows device version needs to be pushed from MECM.
  • Installer packages can be made for manual install; this is not the most efficient method.
  • To see if a PC has the device based license:
    • Look for the OperatingConfigs folder on your machine, it exists only for Shared Device Licensing installs.
      • Windows: C:\ProgramData\Adobe\OperatingConfigs
      • MacOS: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/OperatingConfigs
    • Note migrating the license may not remove the folder, we haven’t tested this.
  • The deserializer is in Software Center / Self Service.
    • Alternatively, download the ZIP file from the following Team folder: \ASCTech Operations - Support\Software\Adobe Deserializer
    • The Macintosh and Windows deserializer applications are both included; however, they require administrative rights and are not as simple as the self service options.
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