Starting a Graphic Design business..licensing questions

Hi,

My fiance and I want to start working as designers from home next year. I have a few questions regarding the Adobe Creative Suite & Licensing and wondering if I can just get a simple answer. Our plan/situation is as follows:

- We both want to start separate freelance businesses, so we will not be working as one business but two

- He has an iMac, I have a Macbook

- We would switch between computers, sharing software

Questions:

1. Can we buy one copy of the Adobe Creative Suite and install it on both computers?
2. Do we need extra licenses?

Like I mentioned, we will be operating as two separate entities (he does videography, I do invitations) but we will share computers and software. If someone could give me some advice that would be a huge help.

Regards,
Butterfly

As far as I know, the Adobe license is for one install on one machine. That means you will need to purchase two licenses. For the best answer, contact Adobe customer support.

My copy of Adobe CS3 is too old to answer the question for you guys, but I'm pretty sure you will need two licenses. It's not the number of machines: I believe my license allows me to install on both a desktop and a laptop (for example); it's the number of users.

The license is good for one PERSON's use of the software, not two.

As chscag said, you'll get the full and correct answer from Adobe.

chscag said:

As far as I know, the Adobe license is for one install on one machine. That means you will need to purchase two licenses. For the best answer, contact Adobe customer support.

Click to expand...

Current Photoshop for example, one license, two machines. I have 3 licenses, installed on 2 MBP's 4 W7 laptops and a W7 workstation.
It used to be the case that Photoshop checked your network to see if more than one copy is running and would disallow the second copy.

As far as I know (I've not tested lately) this is no longer the case.

That being said I believe the EULA calls for a single user for each install of single license.

Yep, you're correct on the single user. The license allows you to run a workstation and a laptop really. I haven't tried multiple instances of either 5 or 5.5 actually, since I have 4 on the other workstation I use still.

If you're going to run a production environment, pony up for the licenses and be happy knowing that it's cheaper than the fines involved.. PLUS coming into compliance.

I was looking at this yesterday for Lightroom, I would assume it's the same for the Creative Suites.

One license allows you to install on two computers for the exclusive use of one person.

Can I use my software on two computers?

If you own, or are the primary user of, a single-user or volume license Adobe product that is installed on a computer at work, you can also install and use the software on one secondary computer of the same platform at home or on a portable computer. However, you may not run the software simultaneously on both the primary and secondary computers.

No more than one user can use a single-user license Adobe product.

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From here.

What you are allowed to do and what you can do are entirely different but legally speaking you will need to purchase two licenses if you want multiple people to be using the software at the same time across two machines.