I should add that in the past couple of years, since the exchange rate has near $2 to £1 the 1$ price equalling 1£ in the UK has changed a bit. For example a MacPro is £1699 ($3,400) in the UK and $2,499 in the US.
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Is photoshop realy worth that price?
- Thread starter safeas
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So if your a business in the uk competing agents businesses in the USA and you both buy the Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium your american competitors are $74,000 better than you if you both buy 100 copies, with all that extra cash your american competitors can afford better advertising and even to have twice as many staff using the software as your company, only just a little uncompetitive i would say.
A site license for CS is not the same as 100 copies of the product... and organisations who buy site licenses are generally not competing internationally; they're either part of global publishing or advertising groups, or large outfits like newspapers or other media organisations i.e. newspapers, magazines and the like.
Twice as many staff? A business that made decisions that way would go under due to good old fashioned poor management long before software costs got in the way. In a rigid tight money situation like that, a more sensible plan would be to drop the head count down to 98 or 99. And of course, as BV noted, when you are buying licenses for that many seats, you don't pay anywhere near retail, so even the idea of cutting a job or two would be a little far fetched. Honestly, for a business that can afford 100 staff, $70K is small change.
Change the record buddy. It is too expensive, it's a necessity not a luxury, there aren't actually many new features and if you don't want to tear your hair out on an Intel, you have to get it. They've got you over a barrel and they know it.
Resist the urge to swear at me - this is the forum, not a PM.
I didn't mind paying £160 for the Photoshop CS3 upgrade.
It will probably be another two years before CS4 ? appears, so my upgrade is going to cost me just less than £1.50 a week. I can live with that for such a great program.
FJ
It will probably be another two years before CS4 ? appears, so my upgrade is going to cost me just less than £1.50 a week. I can live with that for such a great program.
FJ
Well, if you're a professional, you pay the price for professional tools. I don't think anyone here had an issue with that.
However, if the exact same tool (or banana) costs $100 in one place and $200 in another, then it warrants asking "hey, is this fair?"
Especially given that it's software, the price difference seems that much more artificial. It's not like disc replication in the UK costs more than in the US (if indeed they are even replicated in different factories).
However, if the exact same tool (or banana) costs $100 in one place and $200 in another, then it warrants asking "hey, is this fair?"
Especially given that it's software, the price difference seems that much more artificial. It's not like disc replication in the UK costs more than in the US (if indeed they are even replicated in different factories).
It's possible that Adobe operate a full-cost recovery model where Adobe UK has to account for its own operating costs and margins.
There is no doubt that the cost of living, fuel, utilities, salaries, rents is higher over here than the US and perhaps that accounts for the discrepancy.
There is no doubt that the cost of living, fuel, utilities, salaries, rents is higher over here than the US and perhaps that accounts for the discrepancy.
the GIMP
For people who want to do the same kind of editing that you can do with Photoshop, but dont want to play photoshop prices (or ANYTHING for that matter). Check out "The Gimp"
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/
Its free baby free.
For people who want to do the same kind of editing that you can do with Photoshop, but dont want to play photoshop prices (or ANYTHING for that matter). Check out "The Gimp"
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/
Its free baby free.
Or even Seashore, based on the same code.
They're not really suitable for pros though sadly. For work, you really need Photoshop.
LOL - I do! Professional does not mean massive corporations necessarily - freelancers have to pay the same amount. Someone mentioned the cost of software in other professions, but not all professional outfits are created equal. Even fewer would have lone freelancers.
Also bare in mind, for a lot of jobs, professional software means Microsoft Office. I don't see that costing £1500.
Neither do most of the CS3 configurations. The Standard Web suite is £600 or thereabouts. Only the Master Suite is over £1500 and that contains twelve professional quality integrated programs.
Well, I didn't say that the companies were justified in charging whatever they wanted, just that pro tools cost money and that pros, generally, recognize this.
If I was professional contractor, I don't think I would whine about paying, say, $100 for a pro-grade hammer when Wal-Mart sells cheapie hammers for $3. There are certain tangible things that the higher price buys you, in terms of quality, ergonomics, durability, longevity, etc. However, I would be upset if that same hammer suddenly sold for $500, for no good reason other than "the pros know they will have to pay it".
There are two issues here. There is the issue of relatively high cost of professional grade applications (there seem to be people who claim to be professionals and yet feel they are entitled to professional tools at consumer prices). Then there is the separate issue for charging twice as much in one market for the identical product.
Yeah, and for corporations 'professional' can mean shelling out a quarter million dollars for a copy of Flame. Makes photoshop seem cheap by comparison.
And on a smaller scale, a little architecture firm still has to pay 5 grand for Revit. If they want to stay up to date they'd have to upgrade at least once a year. Photoshop costs practically nothing compared to what people in other professions have to deal with.
Even within the graphics profession Photoshop is dirt cheap. 16 years of upgrades for Photoshop costs me about the same as a 1 year service contract for Maya Unlimited. Photoshop is by far the most profitable software I have ever owned.
If that's what it was, the prices in the UK would be much lower.
Until 1990 or so, the graphics industries were among the most expensive, at least if you wanted to do the kinds of things that the Adobe suite can handle now. This software doesn't only replace paper, but also an array of large, horrendously expensive machines.
There are definitely many more fields with independent contractors who have to pay much more for their software. Engineering and accounting spring to mind immediately, they're far from alone. And of course, people in the service industries have investments in equipment that make these software prices laughably small.
Outside the corporate world, there aren't may fields where Office alone would be sufficient.
I don't use Photoshop where I work (iPhoto is fine for me at home, plus Elements if I need to tweak something), but as an engineer for a large company I have to second the comment about Photoshop being a relatively cheap program.
We have database management software and mathematical simulation equipment that far exceeds anything Adobe offers, in terms of pricing. Graphics people, rejoice!
We have database management software and mathematical simulation equipment that far exceeds anything Adobe offers, in terms of pricing. Graphics people, rejoice!
Before Photoshop I used to hire Paintbox artists to create images. The lowest price I could get for a Paintbox session was $750 per hour, the boxes were about $750,000 from what I remember. Photoshop came along and created a revolution in the graphics industry. I find it sad when people dump on Adobe, a company that almost single handedly transformed the graphics industry into what it is today.
I wasn't trying to infer that Maya was the same as Photoshop. I use Maya as a graphics app side by side with Photoshop to create images all the time. If you mean that it's in completely different league than PS because it's far more expensive, then yes, that's my point.
How many corporations consist of one or two people in the company
People aren't comparing like with like - every profession is different. Surely a freelance designer is no different from a freelance journalist - and they don't use software that's into the thousands. Sure, if you have a large number of employees and are a moderately sized company, it's not too bad. I'm not saying it's grossly overpriced, I just think it's too much for what it is. There isn't a huge deal of difference between PS 6 and CS3 - you just need the latter for Intel machines.I'm not denying Adobe haven't revolutionised things, but they have a monopoly and they know it. No doubt Apple would have liked a universal version of CS2 out when they brought out the Intel Macs, but Adobe stuck to their own thing. Apple had been working on an x86 version of Tiger for a while, so Adobe had plenty of time. Obviously, more profit was in waiting for CS3 - like all businesses, it's about profit, not doing the consumer a favour. If Adobe hadn't created PS or AI, someone else will have done. You don't owe them anything - as many people realised it was best to abandon Quark and move to InDesign.
Isn't the vast majority of the service industry 'the corporate world'?
Sorry to keep quoting things, but I think this is an excellent point. There has to be a point where a tool is too expensive and 'professional use' isn't a good enough justification. And is a single roofer and his apprentice less professional than a bigger firm with teams of roofers working all around the city? And is right to say that hammer is cheap when a huge company down the road pays many times more to use cranes in their roofing business?
Imo, there is one problem with the CS3 suite, and atm I'm debating if I'll just skip CS3. Other than the native Intel Mac support there really is no big feature that makes it much more productive than CS2. I'd love if someone proves me wrong, so if you know any, please tell me!