How To Change The Language In Photoshop

Adobe’s Photoshop has long been a standard in image editing. So much so that “to photoshop something” means any form of image editing. Working in Photoshop, especially if you are a beginner, requires English language proficiency. Every tool and option is in English by default and there are many of these.

Luckily, and as you might have presumed, it’s now possible to change the language in Photoshop.

Why Change the Language?

Changing the language in a photo editing software tool seems fairly trivial. You mostly deal in images and you are probably familiar with the English language to the extent of knowing the tool names, right? Not if you put yourself in the shoes of Adobe. They want as many people to use their software as possible. For instance a native speaker is a lot more likely to pick Photoshop over a local editing tool if there’s a Photoshop language option for it, don’t you think?

On the flipside, someone may be an English speaker who bought a foreign version of Photoshop and want to switch to English.

All in all, there are many reasons why a user would want to know how to change the language in Photoshop. Unfortunately, this isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. For some reason, the language settings in Photoshop are much more complicated than you’d think.

The Hitches

You can change Photoshop language by installing different language packs available on the official Adobe website. The process isn’t overly complicated. However, if you bought the program from a source other than Adobe’s website, you won’t be able to switch language. Of course, you can always purchase another copy of Photoshop officially, but that’s assuming that you’re filthy rich.

Fortunately, for our second scenario, there is a workaround here that will help you change the menus from a foreign language to English. But, let’s deal with language pack installation first.

Installing and Setting Language Preferences Using the Cloud Creative Desktop App

If you have and use you Adobe Cloud Creative account, then this option is the best and easiest solution for you.

1. To start, open up your Cloud Creative desktop app.
2. Now, click on the Account icon in the top-right corner and select Preferences.
3. Then, click on Apps.
4. Next, click on the Default install language drop-down men and select your desired language.
5. Select Done when you’re finished.
6. You’ll now need to uninstall and reinstall Photoshop for the changes to take effect, all this option does is set the language you selected to default to that on installation.

Installing a New Language Pack

First of all, you can stop looking for language pack downloading options in Photoshop’s menu. You won’t find this option there.

1. Close Photoshop and find the latest version of Adobe Application Manager on Google. Download and install it.
2. Once installed, start Adobe Application Manager, where you’ll be prompted to sign in. Use your Adobe ID (the one used for purchasing your copy of Photoshop) and enter all the required credentials.
3. Next, go to the Apps tab. Here, you’ll be able to see a list of purchases that you’ve made. If you’ve ordered your Photoshop from the Adobe website, it should be on the list next to Installed. If there is nothing on the list, restart Adobe Application Manager. If you still can’t see your Photoshop version on the list, then you must’ve bought it from an alternate source and won’t be able to install the language pack.
4. Now, navigate to the gear icon and open the Preferences window by clicking on Settings.
5. Then, select the Apps tab, click on App Language, and find your preferred language on the list.
6. Once you’re done, you can close this window and you should see an Install option next to your purchased Photoshop version. Again, restart Adobe Application Manager if you don’t see this. Click Install to download and install the new language pack.
7. Next, launch the Photoshop app, which will be in the default language still.
8. Go to Edit, then Preferences, and access the appearance settings.
9. Now, change the UI Language to the one from the downloaded language pack and hit OK, and that’s it! You’ve changed your Photoshop language.

Changing the Menu Language to English

The only possible operation for those who didn’t buy their Photoshop on Adobe’s official website is changing the menus to English.

1. To do this, close Photoshop and go to C:\Program\Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop\CS5Locales. If you’ve installed the app in another path, locate and navigate there.
2. Find the installed language subdirectory (it_IT format) and select Support Files.
3. Find the tw10428.dat file and rename it to tw10428.dat.bak. This should change the Photoshop menu language to English.

Changing Language in Photoshop

Changing Photoshop language is a lot less straightforward than you might think, unless you purchased your copy from the official Adobe website. If you bought it from anywhere else, even if it’s completely legitimately, you won’t be able to change the language except in the menu.

Have you ever experienced any issues with changing the language in Photoshop? Do you know of another way to do it in all Photoshop versions regardless if they’re downloaded from the official website? Share your thoughts in the comments section.