This is Garrett Murray's Maniacal Rage

Tip: Photoshop CS4 Installation Components

The PS CS4 installer presents you with a crapload of optional “shared components” for install, and I wasn’t sure which were necessary or not so instead of installing them all I did a little research first and figured out what each item was and if it was important. This might help you too when installing.

Optional items you don’t need to install (unless you have a specific need for one of them):

Adobe AIR — The Adobe Integrated Runtime, which is a cross-platform runtime env for internet apps that can also live on your desktop. Many people have already installed this to run things like Twitter clients, etc, but it’s not actually necessary unless you want to run an AIR app, at which time you can install AIR stand-alone.

Adobe Device Central — For testing how your stuff will look/function on mobile devices. “Simplifies mobile authoring workflow.”

Adobe Drive — Makes Version Cue servers show up as standard mounted drives which makes working with Version Cue easier.

Adobe Media Player — This is mostly a way for Adobe to show you ads. You don’t need this, as QuickTime, VLC and many other media players play all this content and without ads.

Optional item you might want to install:

Adobe Extension Manger — “Easily install new extensions and manage the ones you already have.” Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever used this, but since it’s small (98MB) it might be worth installing in case you need it.