Today Photoshop CC 2015.5 has been released even if everybody wanted CC 2016. This will cause you some headaches: let me hand you a painkiller. First thing to know: CC 2015.5 is, for some inscrutable reason, a major version.

• CC internal version was 14
• CC 2014 was 15
• CC 2015 was 16
• CC2015.5 is 17.

This means that if you’ve set an upper version in your manifest.xml like:

<HostList>
  <Host Name="PHXS" Version="[14.0, 16.9]" />
  <Host Name="PHSP" Version="[14.0, 16.9]" />
</HostList>

Your panel will just stop working. Myself, I prefer not to set any range, like:

<HostList>
  <Host Name="PHXS" Version="14.0" />
  <Host Name="PHSP" Version="14.0" />
</HostList>

Which means: from 14.0 onwards. Mind you, the installation paths for extensions are thankfully always the same:

(Win User): C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CEP\extensions\
(Win System): C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\CEP\extensions\
(Mac User): ∼/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions
(Mac System): /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/

Second thing to know: in Photoshop at least, CEP jumped to (major) version 7. Documentation and new features should be available soon. Please note that CEP7 means that for debugging purposes you need to set a new debug flag! On Mac, open the Terminal and enter:

defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.7 PlayerDebugMode 1

On Windows run Regedit, browse to: HKEY\_CURRENT\_USER/Software/Adobe/CSXS.7 then add a new PlayerDebugMode key of type String with value 1.

Third thing to know: according to this Adobe’s official blogpost, there is now a suggested path for shared, third-party plugins (in case your Panel uses them). What happens when your users migrate to the new CC 2015.5 major version is that, by default and unless they know how to avoid it, old CC 2015 is going to be removed.

So all your Scripts belonging to /Presets/Scripts and your plugins in /Plug-ins are gone too. The paths for versions persistent plugins (from CC up to current, and hopefully newer versions too) according to Adobe is:

(Win): C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-Ins\CC
(Mac): /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CC

Fourth thing to know (hey, I can count!): if you rely on .zxp for installation, you need to download the new version of ExManCmd command-line tool from this link. If/when something new emerges, I will update this post.

X-Files corner: Photoshop went from version 5 to 5.5, then from CS5 to CS5.5 (actually 5.1 but within a Creative Suite version 5.5), and now from CC 2015 to CC 2015.5. There must be something really weird going on in Adobe with the number five – conspiracy theorists, let me know! 😁

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