CS4 plug-ins, 3rd party plug-ins and filter problems

1- What happened to all the filters available in CS3? They were a good thing. Why does Adobe kill off what's already working well and looking good? For instance, where's the Distort>Diffuse???

2- Same thing with PS plug-ins and third party plug-ins. They're all gone, now that I've "upgraded." (A term I use with disgust.) I paid too much money for all the aggravation I've been experiencing with these three issues.

But I digress: I dragged plug-ins to the folder, but they still don't show up.

Thank you.......

iMac 23" 2.16 GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo 3 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 ACR5.2

PS: Why does Adobe take away what finally works smoothly? Why offer a feature, and then take it back 18 months later with the next version? I'll sleep better at night if I can just understand how it helps the users to have the useful deleted.

First of all, make sure you have not moved the application icon or the application folder from the default install location, and that you have not created subfolders there in a misguided attempt to "organize" things.

Secondly, please tell us what you upgraded from. If you had been running some 3rd party plugins that are not written for Universal Binary, they may not run in a newer OS or a newer machine.

Third, please see the documentation or Adobe Photoshop's Principal Program Manager John Nack's blog for the stuff that was taken out in CS4:

<http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/where_did_extra.html>

Filter > Distort > Diffuse Glow is right there where it's always been. If you don't see it, you're either in 16 bits or have a bad install.

In CS3 and CS4 the default installation location MUST be observed scrupulously. Adobe applications must reside on the root level Applications folder on the boot volume. You must not create subfolders to disturb the folder structure.