Let’s be honest, Photoshop isn’t cheap. Most of us have probably complained about the cost of Photoshop, and Adobe products in general at some point in our careers. The fact is that none of us could do our job without it. It’s an advanced application meant for professional users. It is used by people in all walks of life, from photographers to web designers; but is it worth the $699 price tag? In this article, we will take a balanced look at whether or not Photoshop costs too much, not enough, or if it is priced just right.
Before we get started let’s take a look at what inspired this article. A few months ago, former Digg CEO Kevin Rose (@KevinRose) posted the following tweet:
He’s not alone in that sentiment, of course. In addition to Rose, other users feel the price tag is way too high. When I posed the question about Adobe pricing on Twitter user @cothrift replied with, "Photoshop’s price is steep, [and] the constant updates every year makes affording it hard." Another Twitter user, @BreRoz responded, "I think the software is expensive but I’ve been lucky enough to have had my employers provide it for me. I don’t know if I would be able to get it otherwise."
Right now, the latest version of Adobe Photoshop CS5 sells for $699 to buy or $199 if you upgrade from a previous version. If you are lucky enough to be eligible for student or educator rates you’ll be shelling out $199 for the full "Extended Teacher and Student Edition." But are these prices worth it? As usual, there are two sides to the story.
If you look at it from a business standpoint, you can argue that such pricing levels are justifiable based on the amount of Research and Development that goes into constantly building up and improving the product. Designers are continuously pushing the envelope with their creations, which translates into needing bigger and better products.
Secondly, the chances of a designer making that money back – and then some – are high so this can be viewed as a professional investment. If you have doubts, calculate your ROI…how many projects will you have to land in order to make your money back based on your current hourly or project rate? If you’re able to spare the initial investment then your upgrades down the line are about a third of the cost.
Todd Hemker, co-owner of the design company Yellowshed breaks it down this way: "It’s not like there’s a formula for it – but if I were buying Photoshop as a stand-alone application the initial cost is $699 and the average lifespan of any particular version is roughly two years and we don’t purchase every upgrade. If you use it daily, for example, that brings the cost to under $2.00 a day." Or roughly $60 a month. Chances are most designers, freelance or not, make at least $60 a month or the equivalent. "However," he concedes, " if we were just out of school and working as freelance designers – there’s no way we would be able to put down that kind of cash!"
Now that he’s a more established designer, Hemker’s solution is to buy the bundled pack. Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 Standard costs $1299 to buy and $499 to upgrade from a previous version. The Suite includes the latest versions of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat Pro. If purchased separately, all of these components would cost around $2440, nearly double the Suite price. So if a person uses both Photoshop and InDesign, they would essentially receive Illustrator and Acrobat free if they get the Suite. Bulk pricing at its finest, right? Who doesn’t love a "Buy 2-Get 2 Free" deal?
Finally, when compared to other apps like Logic Studio, Pro Tools, Final Cut Pro, the cost is about the same or more leading some to believe that Photoshop is getting a bad rap because it’s the big kid on the block.
The Flip Side
Chances are, however, if you’re a freelancer or a small design firm owner, $1299 – or even $699 for that matter – isn’t pocket change, especially for those just starting out. Many designers turn to alternatives that don’t have the full capabilities of Photoshop. But in reality, there are very few legitimate alternatives to Photoshop on the market and most designers are faced with either paying the full price, pirating a copy, or not buying it at all.
It’s no secret that software piracy – whether it’s Microsoft products or Adobe’s – is a huge problem that these companies are taking a hard stance on. For example, Adobe’s "Anti-piracy initiative" takes the position that software piracy doesn’t just hurt the company, but it hurts retailers ("they may have to limit their selection to titles that won’t be devalued by pirated copies floating around on the Internet.") as well as the consumer. While there are no hard stats on piracy rates specifically for Adobe software (c’mon who’s going to admit to that?), companies DO have their ways of smoking out the culprits. Gregory Fair was convicted a year ago of selling $1 million in pirated Adobe software and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison and was ordered to pay the company $743,098 in damages according to the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), of which Adobe is a member. In other words, these companies aren’t taking piracy lying down.
A couple of designers (who shall remain nameless, of course) privately responded to my inquiry on Twitter that as design students or new freelancers, they have had to turn to getting their copy from "non-official" places. Many schools require that their students own their own version of Photoshop. So they need it to pursue their education; and at its current cost, they said, they simply can’t afford it.
Over all, it may seem as if small business owners and freelancers are getting the short end of the stick, but not just with Adobe Photoshop. In response to consumer pressures and increased competition, Microsoft has lowered the price of their MS Office Suite of products over the last few years…for their home users. The standard student and home edition is a respectable $149 yet their professional edition for businesses is a huge jump at $499 with the difference being the addition of Outlook, Publisher and Access. That begs the question, if Adobe were to follow suit, would this cut down on piracy problems and increase legitimate sales?
So what is a freelancer or small business owner to do? Do you think lowering the prices on these products will increase sales and cut down on piracy issues or is it worth paying "elite" prices for what some consider an "elite" product?
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Imho prices for PS are so high because the one who paid for legal purchase of product paid also for 4-5 ones who illegally downloaded it form torrents and so on. Companies just don’t want to be f’ed by reducing benefits and trying to f’ customers for compensate. It works not only in software markets, i saw some examples in passenger transportation and other business directions.
Agreeing with “Doctor”, but only to a degree.
It makes sense that Adobe are trying to cover for losses caused by people torrenting. However if the product wasn’t priced so highly in the first place not as many people would resort to torrenting. There is a big difference of spending 100 or 200 dollars on a product, compared to 700 or more.
Adobe costs A$1,671.00 inc GST in Australia. Considering the currency is pretty much at parity with the US, can someone please explain why Australians pay $1000 more? At that price, not many individuals can honestly afford it; it costs more than some laptops even.
I can’t agree. Adobe should know without a sliver of a doubt that there is SO much demand for their products, that they could sell at a lower price and make up the lower cost through quantity alone. The demand is so clear. There is a market for reasonably priced multimedia applications and Adobe is not providing. It’s a shame they’re an industry standard otherwise other companies could easily fill the void in a heartbeat.
Nicely said.
Those who download illegal Adobe soft would not buy it anyway due to a high price. Those who buy for business pay to get tax reductions – that’s why the price is high!
I do agree that the price is too high. However, I don’t think it is because we are paying for a few pirated versions. Adobe has a firm hold on the design industry as the standard set of programs for professionals. Because they have such a vice grip hold on us, they can charge higher amounts of money and still sell large amounts of their products. I am a student, so I (thankfully) got the discount on my version of Photoshop.
As somebody who has shelled out for the costs of these products to develop my new website I noticed the particularly high price of Photoshop and Illustrator.
I don’t think it’s anything other than to further promote their package suites such as the Design Premium. I think that attracting more attention to a wider range of products helps promote the companies products further and therefore create more revenue later on in upgrades and references.
I think they set the prices of their individual products higher to sell more package suites.
I think that Adobe products do cost more then they are worth, but I don’t think bringing down the price will help stop pirated versions. You have programs that cost $69 for full (Paintshop) and they still get pirated. I use both Paintshop and Photoshop, cause there are some things Paintshop can’t do and Photoshop can.
My only downside with Adobe other then the prices is the constant upgrades. I’m the type who likes to stick with one. I had cs3 since I bought it and never upgraded. A few months ago my PC crashed and I had my CD box and everything for CS3 but Adobe said I had to buy a full version of CS5 because my version was out dated and I was only eligible for an upgrade from CS4 (understandable) BUT.. if I have a CD and serial number that I once paid $900 some dollars for .. how can it become outdated?
Plus CS5 likes to crash A LOT when opening files or loading brushes, gradients, etc.
Might I offer an opinion from a musician’s point of view:
[1]
Pro Tools is (probably) to the music recording industry what Photoshop is to the photography/design industry: it has a good sound engine, world renowned brand, and basically every professional studio uses it.
The price for the new Pro Tools 9 is $599.
Previously, you could only install Pro Tools IF you had the supporting Digidesign (now Avid) hardware: the least expensive professional option starting at a cool $7,995.
Luckily, Pro Tools 9 now allows you to use the software with any hardware (even on board sound cards).
Granted, there could be a team of engineers in a studio, all working with one copy of Pro Tools.
Even so, many of us use other software: Reaper being a favorite – great features costing at $40 for a personal license.
[2]
In an earlier comment, a reader wrote that the $699 cost of Photoshop is easily recoverable within one design job (thumbs up to your success, Sir!)
I second that opinion. I am not a music graduate by school – I mostly learn via self tuition, online articles, and industry journals. I use a legit copy of Cubase LE – a cutdown version of Cubase (which costs $399 for the Studio version). The Cubase Essential version can be purchased for $195.
Recently, I was able to secure a commissioned work composing music for a commercial: the gig paid $200 (only because it was my first time and for a friend – later I found out that I could’ve charged $300 and it would be considered average). So that one gig actually paid for the software itself, IF I had even bought it in the first place.
So in short, I just want to say:
If you do love what it is you do, and you need a tool to be able to do it efficiently, you should acquire the tool appropriately – and the integrity that you get to keep will shine in your portfolio so that your clients and potential clients can sense it and trust you with bigger more promising projects!
Cheers,
considering there are other products for free that have the ability to do what photoshop does, yes it’s too expensive.
I will be honest. My father was a computer engineer, and he now develops software. I’ve been exposed to computers and software development from a very young age. I am very computer adept myself, and have made money as a web designer and doing computer technician jobs on the side for extra cash. While I am no engineer, I’ve learned a lot about engineering and what goes into making hardware/software. Knowing this, I can tell you that photoshop is not worth the cost and has never been worth the cost.
Photoshop in the US costs $700. Do you know what kind of technology $700 can buy you? It can buy you an HD television, a brand new laptop, a monitor with superior specs for designing, an elliptical machine/treadmill, a highly advanced compute processing unit, a home security system, a 200+ GB Internal Solid State Drive (advanced technology), etc. What do all of those things have in common? They require engineering, years upon years of research, money for resources that aren’t available to the public, and they must be tested extensively before being given out (at least, the original models).
Why don’t I consider photoshop to be equivalent to these? Because CDs can easily become scratched or broken. If a computer breaks down, and God forbid you lost your CD (say you were moving, and things got mixed up), you have to shell out the money all over again. On top of that, they charge you a ridiculous amount for upgrades. Let’s say you want to stay up to date with technology, so you buy new computers parts/a new computer every five years. You spend a decent amount on one, say, a thousand bucks (I spend far more on mine as I run servers and need processing power but the average user does not need what I need). That results in about $200 a year for updates. This is the same as photoshop, right? Wrong.
Photoshop is an individual program. It has no warranty. If that CD breaks, you are screwed. If a single piece of equipment in a computer breaks, you can get it repaired if it happens within 1-3 years for free. Or, they will send you a brand new copy. This might not seem like much, but when you’re shelling out $200 a piece for hardware you appreciate not having to buy a new one. To keep compatibility up with windows, the companies making your hardware each have to individually make new driver updates every six months or so. They must keep it compatible until they’ve advanced several generations above that hardware and can afford to drop support. On top of that, a computer is made up of many components. Photoshop is one program. All of these components have to be individually maintained by their manufacturer (motherboard, hard drive, CPU, memory, networking card, video card, sound card, etc).
Photoshop considers itself to be equal to all this work. It’s not. For one, you need a computer to use photoshop in the first place. What if you don’t have a computer yet, or yours is too slow to handle photoshop (older computers have had issues with newer versions of photoshop)? First you have to shell out anywhere from $300-$2000 depending on if you’re using mac or windows, and then you have to shell out another $700 for the program itself. That’s ignoring the cost of other programs such as Microsoft Office. What freelance designer is going to be able to afford that from the get go?
The people fresh out of college generally have their parents either paying for it, or helping pay. Some are lucky enough that they can afford it with the student discount while in college. Some get hired by companies that will supply it, but not all companies do. Some people don’t have their parents to carry them through college, though. Some people are paying their own way for college, or have to pay rent every month.
More people torrent than you would think, and with good reason. I am a firm believer in the robin hood concept. If the rich (companies) are ripping off the poor to an excessive point (I do not mean charging $10 too much for something, I mean by hundreds or thousands of dollars), then the rich deserve to be stolen from. I don’t steal, but I don’t hold it against the people who do. Companies put a great deal of money into demonizing piracy when they refuse to acknowledge the fact that they’re charging way too much to begin with. Apple rips the consumer off with their bloated prices, and then goes out of its way to demonize those that use “Hackintosh” (putting Mac OS X on a machine of your own instead of a mac purchased computer).
Most of the people who download are not spoiled brats who can afford it and just “don’t want to pay for it”. “Pirates” are actually people who genuinely wish they could pay for something, but in no way could afford it due to other financial responsibilities. Technically, listening to music on youtube is “pirating” it, correct? Because you can’t listen to it if you don’t pay for it. Right? CDs cost a lot, and while itunes may only charge $10 for an entire cd, it’s inferior in quality (.mp3 is compressed) to a cd purchased at the store.
I am all for buying CDs and supporting bands, but when you’re buying a CD from some guy who lives in a mansion on hundreds of acres, has a summer house, a pool, and drives a $70,000 vehicle you can’t help but feel like it’s not going to anything meaningful. On top of that, most bands make their revenue from concerts, not CD sales. If you really want to help a “poor, struggling band” then go see them in concert.
Photoshops costs are not currently proportional to the cost of everything else. It should be far easier to access. Think about it how many more people would buy it if it only costs $350. Sure, that’s cutting the price in half, but it would put the price into a more affordable range and net in new customers. Because for every overpriced, unaffordable model they sell, they’re losing thousands of customers who would have paid for it if it had cost less.
And let’s face it, some people have student loans and mortgages to pay on top of their bills. Not everyone is living in an apartment for $700 a month and can afford to blow extra spending money on this program. What’s worse, charging astronomical prices for things like this not only makes them impossible to legally obtain for some people, but it also raises the prices of everything else because now you have similar companies or products thinking they can charge more because adobe is. It raises the price of everything. It inflates things. Think about the housing market.
The only way adobe could ever justify the $700 price tag is if they gave free updates for life until that version is no longer supported. Otherwise, the program is a ripoff and deserves to be torrented.
I have been using Photoshop since version 2 (not CS2, but v2), and yes, it hurt when I was in my early 20′s and had to purchase it for about the same price that it is today. But as also pointed out, it’s easy to make the money back, if you are good at what you do.
If you’re fresh out of college, plan better and purchase the Student edition for a fraction of the cost. If you’re worth your weight in install DVDs, then you’ll be making plenty enough to purchase the next version up when it gets released.
As pointed out by many commenters and the article itself, there are plenty of open-source and cheap alternatives. However, except for rare cases, most find out why Photoshop carries it’s expense pretty quickly. Open source is voluntary to develop, so bugs often don’t get fixed quickly. Cheap software has small teams, and can’t focus on those intricacies that Photoshop possesses.
Just because it is software doesn’t mean it should be cheap. Take some computer science classes and find out how difficult it is, if you think software doesn’t deserve to have value.
and…@Lady: Wow. I don’t even know how to respond to this. Software *is* engineered. Photoshop CDs can be replaced if you registered the product. And taking copies from torrents makes you nothing more than a thief using justifications as an excuse to steal. Stop being angry at those making a living, and start your own computer hardware and software company if you are unhappy with what currently exists. Good luck.
Once you’re no longer a student, you can’t use your student version to upgrade.
When you buy software, you aren’t buying a CD. You are buying the right to use the software. If you scratch your CD/DVD, you can send the original into Adobe to get it replaced.
Second, it costs millions upon millions upon millions… upon millions of dollars to develop software. And software development *is* an engineering practice. I know this because I have a degree in Computer Science, I work in the software industry and I have years of both development and people management and business management experience. I’ve worked on multi-million dollar software projects. Have you? No? Then don’t pretend that you are an expert. You’re not.
That aside, this is a free economy. That means that companies don’t charge just enough to cover their costs, they charge whatever they think their customers will pay for it. So if their customers are still paying for it then obviously the price of the software isn’t too high.
If $600 is too high for you, look to an alternative solution. Use GIMP, PS Elements, Corel Paint, and many many many others. You have other choices, some of them are free. You just don’t want to use them because they are not the best-in-class. Seriously?
And $200 is not a lot of money for the student edition; I spent more than that on some text books in University. Sure, it seems like a lot of money when you’re 16, but it’s not. And if you are choosing a vocation that makes use of Photoshop, $200 isn’t a lot of money either.
Try thinking of this another way. Pretend you’re a cab driver. What do you need? You need a car [which you can buy yourself or rent from the company; the cab companies don't let their drivers use the cars for free], you need a special drivers license (which costs thousands of dollars per year plus the initial schooling), you need to pay for car maintenance, fuel, insurance, etc. So, a cabbie spends tens of thousands of dollars a year just so he can operate.
If you don’t have all of those things, you cannot make any money. You cannot be a cab driver. The same goes with vocations that ‘require’ photoshop. You have to spend money to make money.
So, in summary, companies don’t write software to keep you entertained. They write software so that they can sell it to their customers and employ [in the case of Adobe] thousands of people and give them jobs so those people can go home and feed their families.
Yes, the executives of Adobe are very very rich. So what? They have sacrificed a lot to get rich. I have worked at a semi-successful software startup and you know what, when I got into management, i worked 16 hour days, 7 days a week (that is not an exaggeration, my employees will back me up on that) and I got paid very well for it… because I worked very very very very very very hard.
So, let me get this straight. We, the people who work for software companies, who have worked stupid hours, sacrificed time with our families (and in some cases sacrificed our health) should take a smaller paycheck just because some punk [who thinks the world owes him something] can get cheap software?
Seriously?
Get real.
Disclosure: I am a trained computer science with years of experience as a software developer, support engineer, people manager and business manager. I do not work for Adobe.
@Disbelief
Nice attitude. I don’t think Lady was looking for a free ride in life with software.
Photoshop is overpriced, plain and simple. Gimp has almost all of PS functions and it is free. But the reason why it will never stand with uptight condescending people like you is because the image is all wrong. Face it, consumer marketing has really wrecked your outlook on life… hasn’t it? Shame, don’t worry. You are not alone.
If companies charge more and more for their products then potential buyers will start moving to torrent sites, like my dad. I know it, you know it. Don’t give me BS like we hurt developers pockets and potential future upgrades. Honestly, I don’t give a rats $%# about the future survival of companies like Adobe. If I have $700, I will gladly hand it to Gimp because as far as I can tell, those people don’t really make megabucks and they still release upgrade after upgrade after… well, you get it.
You said: “Second, it costs millions upon millions upon millions… upon millions of dollars to develop software.”
Why? Well, marketing, salaries, offices, etc. So the cost of commercial software is determined by the amount of money needed to keep it going. But unlike cars, planes or any electronic hardware, software development costs practically nothing – except the PC on your desktop. So it is quite reasonable that a program such as Gimp can throw in quite a few good punches against a commercial driven machine such as PS and with almost no financial backing.
Problem is that Gimp, Blender and most of these opensource software sadly has fallen into a vicious circle of amateurism with itself. The reason is simply because people who start to shine with with their efforts are automatically wrapped up into the commercial “buddy” type system where the big boys link arms together and sing ‘kumbaya’. Windows is automatically part of your brand new PC and good old Adobe nicely rubs shoulders with Mr. Apple. But where is OpenWord, where is Gimp?
Fact is, if someone like Stahlberg decided to switch to Blender, or Michael Klutsch switches to Gimp then you will have some serious backing and many professionals will maybe wake-up from their consumer dreamworld of what they think good and best and face the facts as they really are. Photoshop is hell and gone overpriced. If it was around $250 I might consider.
But seriously, don’t think you are doing yourself or them a favor if you fork out $700 for a piece of software that really should cost less than half that. You are not stopping piracy and you are not being a good ‘boy’ ‘girl’. You are a idiot, with too much money to throw around. Rather give that $700 to a family who who’s been badly struck by this economic crisis or help someone on the street get up on their feet.
Man, I swear, I hate people who spends money on products or software like it is some divine cause. It’s not. It’s self-indulgent.
I can speak only for the german student versions. Nowadays the prices for these versions are fair i think – because:
- you can use them commercially
- you can upgrade if you’re no longer a student
- you can use them on two computers
but if you have to buy the regular versions it is a lot of money. but you have to think that you get a lot for your money. the cs software is very very powerful. each program is a very huge piece of software. many people underestimate that. so the software is not really overpriced. compare what you can do it digitally with analog gear. both for photography, typography and illustration. one thing is, that most users don’t need these wide varity of functions in these programs. but adobe cs is the industry standard so you have to learn and use it.
may be they could add an additional licence model. the same as for students- for private users and for starting business users.
I believe that if prices for any Adobe products were lowered the people pirating as students would reform to purchasing Adobe products legitimately. Like most sales the lower the price, the higher the consumer.
One of the main reasons Adobe charge customers outside the US more for their software, is because they think they can get away with it. They know that as much as some of us grumble, most of us think there is little we can do about it.
In the 21st century it makes no sense that I can’t download Adobe product for the same price as their customers in the US and while individually there probably isn’t much I can do, I wonder if collectively we could organise ourselves to get Adobe to take notice of us?
For this reason there is a new Google Groups email list at http://groups.google.com/group/adobepricing the idea behind the group is to discuss ways to get Adobes attention and ultimately change what is an antiquated pricing policy.
If there are enough of us we may be able to use our numbers to get Adobe’s attention by organising disruptive events such as calling Adobe support or sending an email to complain, although this would need a large number of us to be effective.
If you think paying more for Adobe Software because you’re not living in the US is grossly unfair in a globalised world, please consider joining our group.
Photoshop is the tip of the commercial iceberg. College students figure out how to copy photoshop and use it that way. I do have an 800.oo guitar though thinking about trading it for photoshop.
Hello everyone,
Okay I can understand and even agree with what most of people are saying, BUT Take into account the other people our there (like me) that use Photoshop just for their own usage or amusement and are not making a flaming penny off of it. True if I was going to make back what I put into it then the price MIGHT BE tolerable but not likely.
Photoshop is a great program. Lots of nice filters and other stuff. But with the prices the way they are I tell my friends to go retro and save as much as they can. The old Photoshop CS works just fine on Vista – not sure about Windows 7.
As for the comments by Doctor and Kat – I see no justifiable reason to jack up a price so high just to off set some people who are pirating the software. I do not condone piracy, but I also think overly high prices for a program, that will be out of date in only 3 months to 2 years, are the same as piracy. A little bit like $10 or $20 here and there – YES. More than that – NO.
ANY PROGRAM is obsolete as soon as it leaves the drawing board. So anything over what a good game system would cost is just the company being greedy and in general stupid.
I may be very late into the conversation. But…
I did own a “non-official” copy of photoshop for years. It ended up that much of my computer programs tended to have the same lineage.
It wasn’t until recently I decided to get rid of everything that was questionable (beginning with the computer itself), mind you I work for a non-profit, which means my pay isn’t much more than burger flipping college sophomore… but I have decided to make a stand for the legitimate. After all I don’t want people taking my products for any less than they are worth, How can I say the same if I don’t model the philosophy.
On lowering the cost, I may be new on the Apple end, but I have noticed that their products, as far as software goes, are much more competitively priced than their Microsoft counterparts. Is it the product? Just good pricing? and more importantly what does it do to deter counterfeiting? All questions i am not fit to answer, but I believe they may be on to something that Adobe might want to consider.
-ja
I think Adobe’s pricing strategy is in line with the whole business bihind it, that uses the Adobe software.
This design and market business are very happy with the prices because now small businesses and freelancers like me have to pay rediculous prices for let’s say 1000 businesscards or a simple standrd website.
This business is heavely overrated and overpayed. Why should the same effort and amount of study pay off much much more for marketeers who only talk CRAP.
All their strategies and blabla, while without it all western people still need toothpaste tomorrow, with or without these marketeers and marketing product designers.
It’s an overestimated selfish group of junk, which often earn more than doctors or other more respectable jobs.
To me they are the reason why the bonuss cult is detroying the society to care about each other.
Further more, the Adobe prices would go down if the industry would be willing to handle for example the much cheaper, but very good Corel products.
How could Adobe justify their upgrade prices for newer versions which doesn’t offer much more: the updates are no more than a new bumper on a modified Ford, without any further changes!!!
its NOT worth it. basicly you can get gimp and paint.net and um… ITS THE SAME THING BUT FREE! Thats what i dont get about stupid companies. Adobe sells this for 700. When theres exactly the same thing free, and microsoft sells office for 300 and more and theres open office which is actually better.
Of course it’s not worth that amount of money. No software is and if you think otherwise you either have too much money or are a fool.
Thinking outside the box: If Adobe were to give out PS on a subscription basis, a la world of warcraft, then they could stand to make A LOT more money on their product, and young designers won’t have to worry about the initial outlay and hence would not resort to piracy.
First, before I answer Jonathan: My previous post suffered a bit from hyperventilation so facts were a bit… distorted? Gimp lacks a few important features for serious designers – I agree. Like 16bit RAW editing. But I still stand by my argument that PS is waaaaay overpriced.
You know something that caught my attention just now… how many Freelance or employed designers are raking in enough dough to justify the $700? I dunno about the US or Europe but seriously, here in my country designers really suffer. If you want to make money, study architecture NOT Graphic Design.
Now, Jonathan you said something really frightening:
“If Adobe were to give out PS on a subscription basis, a la world of warcraft, then they could stand to make A LOT more money on their product, and young designers won’t have to worry about the initial outlay and hence would not resort to piracy.”
Are you mad? Don’t give these pretentious and self-righteous idiots any further ideas!!
What you just mentioned is in fact in development as we speak. Large Game companies are trying to curtail the ideas of private ownership all in the name of the fight against ‘Piracy’. No more physical installs. The only thing preventing this step at the moment is hardware. I dunno about Adobe but when you consider current trends in software development it’s no risk taking a guess they might also have invested quite a bit into this. In the next decade or so your WOW scenario will most likely become reality, but to a extreme degree. The system is in fact part of a bigger economical and ideological ideal. When any ownership and usage powers (not intellectual) of a product are taken away and placed in the hands of the creators then you have some serious problems with freedom as a whole.
But you will be a happy chappy because finally companies like Adobe can rightfully reap-up all the rewards their hard labor has entitled them to, right?
I am a home user, I make $0 on my photos, but Adobe’s Photoshop Elements doesn’t cover my needs as a professional level editor. I’m not going to quit my day job (pro-bono attorney) to become a photographer, so I really don’t need Photoshop CS5 for my work. I would buy it at $200 as a non-commercial user, but all I can do is buy Elements and then pirate and use CS5. I think that’s fair because my pirated copy is NOT something I would have bought had the pirated version not been available. Actually, if I didn’t pirate CS5 I wouldn’t have bought Elements either… so Adobe needs to start looking at this situation differently and just release a home version of CS6 when it comes out.
I hear all the arguments and appreciate the investment in developing and maintaining top quality software. But the price of Photoshop ($1,500 in Australia) is so unreachable by small home businesses (especially with the constant expensive upgrades) that people I know just don’t buy it. They struggle by with inferior programs. Student versions are cheaper if you happen to be paying a fortune to be a student, but many of the crucial functions are disabled. Adobe would indeed make much more money, be much more popular with the small guy and be less pirated if they presented a small home office version of Photoshop at a greatly reduced price, with functionality not too compromised.
I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro for the longest time. I started out on version 5, over ten years ago. It is actually pretty good and can be used for quite a bit of graphic design work. It might not be quite as good when it comes to print (or at least integrating with Illustrator), but for web-based images it can do 95% of the practical stuff Photoshop can do (Photoshop does have some more advanced stuff, but it’s the kind of stuff you use only once every few years).
That said, I use Photoshop at college, and I will be buying the student version (along with Illustrator and InDesign) once I have the funds.
For those that feel Adobe is charging too much money, simply do not buy their product. They charge that much because people are willing to pay that much.
Another thing: Here in Romania, de price is almost double. If in US Photoshop is $700, here is 1000 euros …
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