Or Lightroom come to that!

Okay, so here’s why.

Adobe always issue a list of corrections, bug fixes and improvements to accompany an update.

I know a lot of people who read the update synopsis and decide it doesn’t apply to them, so they skip the update, because they see nothing that they think applies to them.

I also know a lot of people who just never bother – until the glorious day comes when they DO decide to run an update from 4 or 5 versions behind – and all does not go well.

Here’s why I ALWAYS recommend a CURRENT VERSION UPDATE such as the latest v20.0.1 to v20.0.2. (Please note I’m talking version updates NOT upgrades).

Every time an update is applied, the internal architecture of Ps is altered by Adobe, and the changes are often far more expansive than those listed in the update synopsis.

Say they facilitate a change to Content-Aware Fill – you think one thing has changed.  But to facilitate that one change they’ve maybe had to change a few hundred lines or more of code in the background.

For all I or you know, the v20.0.2 update might well have changed thousands of code lines from those of v20.0.1. 

The previous version of Photoshop ran from v19.0.0 all the way to v19.1.7 so there were 10 updates to PsCC2018, all of varying sizes and levels of complexity.

When Adobe created the v19.1.7 update for CC2018 it was designed to ‘overlay’ v19.1.6 architecture – NOT that of v19.0.0

Making small gradual changes to anything is far safer than trying to make large changes, and so I always recommend you apply every update to Photoshop and Lightroom when they are available.

Updates also designed to fit with the current version of your computer operating system – indeed some updates are built to improve the Photoshop-to-OS interface itself.

In all fairness to Adobe they have a massive job to do in making Photoshop work across so many platform variations.  Don’t forget that PC users have a huge variety of machinery in terms of CPU, GPU, Main Board and RAM and all these variations can and do impinge upon Photoshop functionality.

By comparison Mac users are a lot easier for Adobe to cope with, but it all adds to the workload mix.

Many Mac users, myself included, had stuck with the fully updated El Capitan OS for a long time after the launch of first Sierra and later High Sierra OS versions due to suspect colour management policies within the latter versions.

As long as Apple and Adobe both continued to support the latest version El Capitan – which worked to virtual perfection – there was no desire to change; after all if it ain’t broke why fix it ???

But before October last year (2018) the Photoshop dev teams had reached a breaking point with backwards OS compatibility support for the forthcoming v20 release, and had to draw a line in the sand, dropping support for certain Windows versions and all pre-Sierra Mac OSX versions.

So fair play to ’em I say, because their job is a lot harder than most users care to imagine.

Adobe are not in the habit of releasing version updates for Photoshop that break anything, so take my advice and apply them as they appear; this way you are ALWAYS ‘on’ the current version. (Alas we can’t always say the same for version updates to Lightroom!).

Where they have been known to screw up in the past is in the premature release of new VERSIONS or what used to classed as version UPGRADES.

If you want to be super-cautious about either updates or indeed upgrades then my advice is always the same – back up your system drive before applying the update or upgrade. That way you can always roll-back if you need to.

Keeping your software application versions up to date is always the best policy.