Adobe announced this week that it has not tested and will not support its Creative Suite 3 line of products, including Photoshop CS3, on Apple's new Snow Leopard operating system.

John Nack, the principal product manager for Photoshop at Adobe, announced on his official blog that CS3 and earlier have not been tested on Snow Leopard. He provided a link to a compatibility document from Adobe that went even further.

"While older Adobe and Macromedia applications may install and run on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6), they were designed, tested and released to the public several years before this new operating system became available," the document states. "You may therefore experience a variety of installation, stability, and reliability issues for which there is no resolution. Older versions of our creative software will not be updated to support Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6)."

General support for CS3 applications, the company notes, exists through Adobe's paid support program.

Adobe released Creative Suite 4 in 2008, effectively replacing CS3. Clearly this latest move is designed to encourage users to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe's software. The Mac upgrade retails for $699.99.

Nack said that there are a few minor problems with CS4 in Snow Leopard, though most of the suite works fine under Apple's new operating system. He said that problems remain in Flash panels and Adobe Drive/Version Cue.

The company's support document states it will support and upgrade CS4 within Snow Leopard. Currently, none of the applications in the CS4 suite require an upgrade to work within the new operating system, to be released Friday.