Adobe products - rip off in UK

Anyone have any hot tips on how to get Adobe products at the base price instead of the inflated UK prices?
I don't think you can buy online from a foreign supplier if you are using a UK card but I am hoping you know different?

On the whole, UK prices are half as much again as US prices. (for instance)
And I for one, simply won't be ripped off like this - I'm pathalogically incapable of handing my money over if I think someone is fleecing me! I'd rather go without

Well said.

I bought the full PSE6 package from an online shop here in the Netherlands as it was cheaper there than the upgrade would have cost me from Adobe. Daft but true. pLus I had no end of problems with Adobe when I first bought PSE4 as a download.
I suggest you look at online shops around the world and buy from whoever is cheapest - they will be cheaper than Adobe almost certainly, and probably a hell of a lot more efficient.

PS A UK CC is no problem for most online shops.

I'm not sure what your family situation is but if you have school age kids check out academic / student licences. Many software companies have them (although they don't shout about it for obvious reasons) They are usually the full software - you just have to prove that you have kids in full time education or you yourself are in full time education. . I've used this for several different packages for work as some companies also allow charities / churches to use the academic / student packs. A quick google shows that Park Cameras are doing CS3 extended student pack for GBP139.99 or you can get the non student pack for GBP589.99 - exactly the same. Microsoft also do some fairly good deals on academic software - I got MS project at a very good price recently - about 30% of the full software price.

If you don't have any kids how about adopting one - could work out quite cost efficient if you have quite a bit of software to buy

I hope this helps - if not you then someone else.

Steve

We were thinking of signing up to a college course on photography, just so that we could become 'students', and therefore take full advantage of these academic offers, seems silly not to.

I think most academic license agreements require you to be a full-time student.

Simply being the parent of a full-time student doesn't qualify that parent to use academic licensed software either.

What would be better is if they started doing 'home' versions. Microsoft have done it with office on the MAC, the student version is also a home version (£99.95), licensed for personal use only, business pays full whack (£349.95).

This seems a better solution to me, just wish they all did it.

(Edit) AND that is licensed for 3 home machines as well.

Another thing to keep in mind are "Student" versions of many software licenses are sometimes non-upgradeable - although for the price, it may be cheaper to replace than upgrade anyhow (if you can still get a student price when you want to upgrade...)

They have - it's called Elements!

The Student/Tutor version of MS Office allows use of three computers in a family that has a full time student. If I remember correctly.

Which just shows what a racket the whole thing is. The companies know that their prices are outrageous, but instead of lowering them to reasonable levels, they come out with charades like this.

I have never bought an unbundled Adobe product, and never will until they start pricing properly. Same with MS Office. But Openoffice.org is now so good that there is no need for the MS version.

G

Peter, you have to read the small print for each package. Some clearly do allow the whole family, on multiple machines to use the software, although the software may need to be licensed in the name of the student.

Perhaps if you don't have kids in full time education then you could buy your grandchildren software for their birthday and you could then let them install a copy on your computer so that when they come and visit they can edit their photos on your pc

Steve (with 2 school age children; willing to take offers from prospective godparents)

That's the sort of idea I'm after.

I had a root around on the net and could find nothing for Lightroom for less than 204 quid. What I need is someone in Canada willing to buy it on my behalf at US prices. I have no problem spending money on good software but there's a principle here and Adobe should be ashamed of themselves for ripping us off.

I bought my first version of PS 2.5 in '92 and have had to watch it getting more gimmicky and yet labourious each year.
I actually need to upgrade everything which is annoying because I hate CS3 the best PS interface was Vers. 3 after that everything seemed to turn into a 2 click operation it has got worse and used more memory ever since. CS3 has an absolutely ludicrous interface and takes about a fortnight to load...
Grumpy old man or what?

Things have actually 'got better' with the price of PS in the UK,...a couple of years back when I was weighing up the prices/packages the UK and US prices were the same digits!!....so PS was effectively TWICE the price here!! An outrageous and arrogant policy on the part of Adobe in my view. However, the fact is that Adobe are a company of doubtful business methods all round from what I can see. So far, I not found a single instance of Adobe products actually working properly in either PS, 'Premier' or 'Adobe Reader'....maybe i'm just stupid or unlucky! Certainly, good design seems to be a difficult concept for the Adobe minds.

The real matter perhaps is whether one really needs to use PS at all(?)...thankfully there are an increasing number of alternatives and, lets not forget, some serious disadvantages to getting involved with PS, apart from the high price.

I can't help feeling that PS is often used as a stick to beat photographers with,.....the implication being that, since it's the 'industry standard' only 'real' photographers use it to the exclusion of anything else. The actual situation is that PS is the 'industry standard' for the print preparation industry largely due to it's historical placement as the first product in it's field. Much of the content of PS is/was not intended for photographers despite the name. Adobe have virtually admitted as much with their introduction of Lightroom,..although they are urging photographers to see a need for both!?

If one needs basic editing of contrast, colour saturation, sharpness etc., without having to edit five hundred files at a sitting, does one really need nearly a thousand quids worth of software?....plenty of the photosnobs on the web say that one does but their claims are increasingly frantic as better software emerges.

In the last few weeks I have been using a computer with PS CS2 already installed so I have taken the oppportunity to 'try' seriously to get my head around it and make a final decision as to it's actual value. It's not been at all easy! The 650 page book from the library is helping but progress is tortuous and problematic at every corner. Just getting my RAW files loaded took a week of evenings and has not been entirely successful as I can't see the thumbnails in the 'Bridge' sub program which serves as a browser.

Advice from 'mattmatic' on this site suggests that the RAW converter of PS does NOT give the best image quality anyway,... so much for the 'industry standard'!! The real question has become; do I really need this huge complexity with it's even bigger time commitment to get good images?

Thankfully, there are an increasing number of good alternatives. LightZone is a nice piece of easily understood software now in its third (?) version and getting better each time. There is also 'PaintShop Pro',..at one time considered to be interchangeable with PS,....and the little known 'Picture Window Pro' is an excellent product from the designer of the old 'Lotus 123' office package. I'm sure there are others.

I thought I was the only one!

I started with version 3 - loved it - eventually migrated to version 5 which I still quite liked and I've been using that ever since. Don't want to move to the later versions. Each time I've upgraded computers/OS I've worried in case V5 will stop working but it now flies like the wind on a fast 64bit Vista machine! It would be nice if it handled RAW files and left EXIF data intact though, then it would be perfect...