My husband wanted a copy of Photoshop, so he looked around online to see what it costs. The MSRP is something like $700 and some retailers like NewEgg have it for closer to $600.
He looked on Ebay and found that there seems to be an odd pattern of copies of Photoshop selling for right around $300. One guy sold men’s belts for years, then suddenly started selling Photoshop for right around $300, plus men’s belts. Another account had only sold things like perfumes and then, bang, Photoshop for right around $300.
Is there any legitimate way a belt seller could be getting real new copies of Photoshop to sell on Ebay for half of their retail price? Gimme the straight dope on what seems to be a strange phenomenon.
Many businesses and colleges have progams where you can buy deeply discounted software. I can get Office 2007 through work for like $20. Maybe these folks are turning those around?
That’s assuming they’re not just Chinese bootlegs, of course.
They could be, but it seems strange that someone who has been selling men’s belts for years would suddenly become a front for Chinese bootleggers. Isn’t it? I mean, that seems odd to me, but I could be woefully ignorant about preferred second jobs of Chinese bootleggers.
And the copies do apparently work, at least according to the feedback the sales are getting.
270205786035 is sold by a seller who sells Adobe Photoshop and rain apparel.
My husband is trying to track down the belt seller again.
ETA: The oddest thing is how they just all of the sudden start selling Photoshop. It isn’t just the Photoshop, but the weird timing.
Sometimes you can get cheap and legitimate copies of software from software liquidators. They buy out overstock, “obsolete versions”, OEM versions, academic versions and inventory from bankruptcies. I’ve saved quite a bit of money that way. You can often get an old version of the software for dirt cheap and then upgrade it to the current version at a large discount.
I’m going with hijacked ebay accounts and bootleg copies.
Adobe is extremely restrictive about it’s software sales, and any copy of Photoshop not sold by a retailer is likely to give you trouble when it comes to upgrading.
Get your husband to ask himself what he wants out of image editing software, and then look around. Unless he has some sound commercial reasons for specifically using Photoshop, there are plenty of cheaper (and even free) alternative image editing tools that can do most of what Photoshop can do - even the eponymous photoshopping. Adobe may try to protect the trademark, but they have succeeded in making their tool synonymous with image manipulation, and thus own the market with a hugely expensive product.
So will a copy sold to you by a retailer.
I’ve still got a copy of 5.0 sitting on my drive, so when CS2 goes sour I can reinstall easily. The 3.0 floppy disks wait in the closet for the possibility of an even direr emergency.
5.0 doesn’t even run on my system, and I don’t have a floppy drive.
He could buy Nikon’s Nikon Capture software for the RAW conversion, and then use The Gimp to do the processing (cloning etc). The Gimp is free, and exceedingly powerful.
This is a tangent, but you bought Office through Microsoft’s Home Use program. Organizations that get certain site licenses for Office can also get licensed to allow their members to apply the license to home use of the software, as long as they are members of that organization. (I don’t know whether that’s included in a site license or is an option at additional cost to the organization.) The $20 does not reflect a discounted price, it is a handling fee that Microsoft charges to send out the installation media. Continuing to use the software when you are no longer with the organization, or selling it to someone else are violations of the license agreement.
Yup, it does a great job with RAW. Be sure to download the newest Adobe Camera RAW, version 4.3.1. It has a few more sliders. The one thing I hate on the newer versions for the PC (5 and 6) of Elements is the lack of Undo button on the toolbar. The latest Mac version, 4, keeps it. Yay for the Mac!!! The major things removed from Photoshop to make Elements are the full Levels controls and advanced prepress functions. Elements handles cloning exactly like the full product.
Hint for the newbies using Adobe RAW: Hold down the Alt key when using the sliders for the Exposure, Recovery, and Blacks. The area in color is, uh, for lack of better terminology, out of adjustment. For instance, the non-black areas in Exposure are overexposed. Moving the slider to the right will reduce exposure. Great help for dilletants like me.
You might be able to find a legit cheap copy of an older Photoshop, like 7, which is perfectly acceptable for most users. However, 7 does not handle RAW files. You an get Nikon CaptureNX for that though.
I didn’t realize PS Elements could handle RAW files; if so, that might be just what you need, at less than $100. There are also various plug-ins for Elements that increase the functionality, for instance, adding Selective Coloring and Curves capability.
The student version of Photoshop is much cheaper than the retail. I think it’s in the neighborhood for $300. You could take a class down at the local community college and purchase it at their bookstore most likely.
Or if you have kids in college you could have them get it at their school’s bookstore.
The student version is fully functional and has no watermarks or anything like that. It’s just cheaper to get students hooked on the software.
