I saw this when I was looking to purchase Dreamweaver. Some folks buy group licenses and then spin it off to individuals. I don’t know if it’s legal.
Also have a look at Adobe Lightroom. A free fully functional 30-day trial is available from Adobe online. It’s not meant to be Photoshop, but if your basic purpose for Photoshop is converting raw files, doing basic image manipulation (toning, cropping, rudimentary cloning), it will do the job. It’s one of the best programs for dealing with a large bunch of raw files at a time. My own photo workflow is 90% Lightroom 10% Photoshop.
And, as powerful and free as GIMP is, if you’re used to Photoshop, I think it will drive you nuts.
The ones he told me about were all of a sudden, and popping up late 2007 and so far this year. So someone goes along for a couple of years selling X, then in December starts selling X and Photoshop. It’s just curious.
There’s also Bibble, and I believe even PaintShop Pro reads RAW these days…
Seems like the most likely explanation.
Have you looked at programs such as GIMP and Paint.NET
Getting GIMP to work with proprietary RAW image formats is not for the faint of heart. I’ve never tried Paint.NET so no comment there.
I have seen full version software sold at half price or less in stores, just before the release of a new version. I have paid $20 for software that was $80 the week before. The manufacture is hoping to hook some new customers, that will want an upgrade to the new version in the future. I have also seen these same softwares show up on eBay for a mark up between the two prices. This works, because the software is no longer in stock at the store that had the discounted manufacturer’s closeout stock. Staples has been one store that had these deals in the past. Most of the deals were at the beginning of the year.