Adobe released an update to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) this week. The new version is ACR 5.5. Updating a single application that uses ACR is easy. Just download the correct installer. But, what if you run multiple applications that use ACR. For example, I have Photoshop CS4 Extended Edition, Photoshop Elements 7.0, and Premiere Elements 7.0 on my machine. They all use ACR.

One option is to download each of the installers. They're not small. They can take a while to download.

You can also download one installer and then cpy the ACR plug-in. You just need to know where the new plug-in is located and where the old copies can be found.

The screen shot above shows the results of searching the C: drive for files named Camera Raw.8bi. Photoshop CS4 was updated already. Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements were not.

1. Start by archiving your old versions of the ACR plug-in. I just append _Old to the file name and copy them to an archival drive. That way, if I ever need to revert for some reason, I can.
2. Copy the new plug-in to the appropriate folder(s). That would be the same place where you find the old versions.

That's it! You can update multiple apps to use ACR 5.5 with just one download.

(This won't work with Lightroom. Updating Lightroom is not as simple as replacing a Photoshop plug-in. You need to download a separate -- and MUCH larger -- update for Lightroom. Updating Lightroom will also not update your copy of ACR.)

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