Yet, adobe.photoshop.cc.2017 refused to die. Because it was so stable, many professionals simply refused to update. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," became the mantra. The 2017 version was seen as the last "pure" Photoshop before the interface became dominated by tutorials and cloud-sharing icons.

The servers began to wind down. Support was dropped. The Typekit fonts (now Adobe Fonts) that CC 2017 relied on began to sync less reliably.