An update to Apple's operating system released late Monday fixed a data corruption problem that Photoshop users had reported after the company's last Mac OS X upgrade.

Among the patches included in Mac OS X 10.5.4, which Apple posted Monday, was one the Cupertino, Calif. company said, "resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server."

Within 24 hours of Apple issuing a massive collection of fixes and patches on May 28, users of Adobe System's CS3 suite's applications -- notably Photoshop and InDesign -- flooded Apple and Adobe support forums with reports that their files had been corrupted and rendered unusable when saved to network servers. Users on Apple's support boards stressed that the file corruption problem cropped up only after they'd updated to Mac OS X 10.5.3.

Yesterday's update to Apple's Leopard operating system fixed the flaw, others said yesterday on the same support thread. "It appears that the 10.5.4 update has resolved this issue. I have tried a few test files and everything seems to be working okay," said a user identified as "chadclark."

The Mac OS X 10.5.4 update included fixes for several specific components and applications bundled with the operating system. Apple patched two problems in its AirPort wireless technology, seven in the iCal scheduling application, two in the Safari browser, and three in the Spaces and Expose elements.

Apple also addressed four general issues outside of the Adobe file corruption bug, including improving the reliability of L2TP (Layer 2 tunneling protocol) VPN (virtual private networking) connections.

As expected, some of the fixes that Apple called out in its online summary of 10.5.4 were changes preparing Mac users for new iPhone-iCal synchronization functionality that will debut July 11 when Apple rolls out iPhone 2.0, the first major firmware upgrade to its smart phone.

Mac OS X 10.5.4, which also included several security patches for Leopard, can be downloaded from the Apple site, or retrieved and installed using Mac OS X's integrated update feature.