CS3 Won’t Save To 10.5.3 Server

Despite Apple's encouragement to install OS upgrades as soon as they're released, most systems administrators test updates for a couple of weeks to see if any obvious or significant issues occur in their environment. It's been two weeks since Apple released Leopard 10.5.3, and while the update fixes a laundry list of problems (including Active Directory, AFP, iCal, Time Machine, and SMB issues), it breaks one simple feature that most Mac users simply can't live without: With 10.5.3 on client or server machine, some Adobe CS3 applications (primarily Photoshop, but occasionally InDesign) can no longer save to network shares.

It's hard to tell who to blame for this disaster, if blame is important to you. The fact that saving documents to the server worked just fine in 10.5.2 (and that multiple sources have reported that the functionality returns in 10.5.4) makes Apple look like the bad guy. On the other hand, Adobe has very publicly resisted modernizing portions of its underlying application code, and their antiquated position of not officially supporting direct server usage is bewildering to anyone computing in the 21st century.

The obvious solution is to avoid installing 10.5.3 at all (or roll back to 10.5.2 if you've kept a Time Machine backup of your system volume) until the problem is solved. The immediate (and far-less obvious answer) is to always use the "Save As" option, which continues to work perfectly on servers of all types.

Update: On June 30th, Apple released their 10.5.4 update. Among it's improvements, they list "Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server".

Recommended Reading: The normally-reasonable John Nack (Senior Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop) first reported issues saving CS3 files to 10.5.3 servers in his otherwise entertaining blog. For those with strong stomachs, some very angry commentary can be found on Apple's own discussion boards.