I'm sorry but being an amateur is no excuse for being a thief. I value other people's copyright the same way that I expect them to value mine.

I read somewhere it is the most pirated piece of software in the world.  Your views on copying of software etc certainly change when you see your own images being pirated

edit.

I had mentioned student editions, this varies country to country (oh joy) and whether you can use it for commercial use also does too (more joy)

BUt for US and Canada there are 3 academic versions
First, is the Education version at $599
Then, there's a Student Edition at $399
Finally, there's a Student Licensing version for $299

The student licence is the licence number only and bought from an educational institution and does not allow commercial use. Going through adobe's forums, the first two versions do though. But I think there is restrictions on upgrades (basically they dont give you a discount to upgrade)

Also it seems to vary from place to place a bit, but here in a Australia apparently "home schooling" etc is acceptable ie you do not have to be formally enrolled in an educational institution, you could be teaching yourself stock photography or learning photoshop and that is legal.   

And there are legal copies on of the academic edition on ebay which can be considerably cheaper too

A few years ago I went to a PS Seminar hosted by Adobe. about 350 attended. The main speaker comes out and says "By a show of Hands , How Many Here actually Paid for Photoshop" I thought I would pee my pant's it was so funny. I buy mine , BTW.

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Cant be bothered- Im going somewhere else.

Quote from: timburton on July 01, 2009, 21:35

I brought up a similar topic recently- it was amazing how much moralising I had to wade through. One thing's for sure- people who do pay for it just love to whinge and moan like a bunch of lame do-gooders when they hear from someone who doesnt pay for it. Your taxes subsidise weapons sales to both India AND pakistan. Do you complain? Nope. Your government gave financial/military assistance to the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge, the USSR, the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, North Korea, Iraq and Iran. And there you are taking the time to post about how immoral it is to pirate photoshop. Bunch of morons- no wonder the majority of microstock photographers dont even make enough money to cover their costs.

I don't quite see the connection.
Somehow you made the leap from pirating software to the perceived immorality of of the US government?
Now if we were talking about paying taxes to such a government, then your argument might hold some validity.

But as it is, we are talking about stealing the hard work of many, many programmers and the support group around them.
You would like it if your images were used on a 500,000 copy print run and you were not paid an extended license?
That is a much closer analogy to using a pirated copy of Photoshop.

Moralizing? Ha.

I prefer to conduct my business in a professional manner. My clients appreciate that I operate legally. I appreciate not having to pay fines for getting caught running my design firm on pirated software.

I guess I'm just picky that way.

I guess you have to ask yourself, will the people buying my images bother to pay for them or is it okay for the end user to rip off the images free of charge any chance they get?

There are lots of legitimate ways to save money on Photoshop.  

Phil's suggestion about the educational version is a very good one.  At Academic Superstore it is selling for $298 and you qualify for the educational discount if you are in classes, are a teacher, or if you have a child in school ( k-12 or college).  

Another way is that periodically they run a special where if you use photoshop elements you can upgrade to full version photoshop for a lower price - $250-$299.

After the initial version the upgrades usually run under $200.

I think that most of us who are doing this for money, even at a hobby level can probably swing $300 for a legal version.

Not trying to moralize, BTW, just offering cheaper ways to go legit

I got PSE with my tablet.  Installed on my mom's computer but I think it's not intuitive at all.

PSP X2 is definitely worth the US$60 I paid for it, and I think it is a very reasonable price.  If all software was available at reasonable prices, there would be much less piracy.

I'm using a legal copy of Photoshop. I saved money from my other (non-photographic) job to buy all my gear and software. It wasn't cheap, but I don't regret it, now I sleep my nights better.

I think everyone that are doing money using Photoshop should pay for the software, It's just fair business competition that way. For instance it really bugs me seeing some "pro" using latest pirated CS4 when I'm still using old CS(1).

Stop using pirated Photoshop, I DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR YOUR PHOTOSHOP.

yeah there are lots of ways to get photoshop at a discount price.

I used some sort of a deal several years ago where if you had bought a Canon camera in the last year you could get a discount on photoshop.  Student discounts are also very generous.

I agree the price is really a hurdle though.  You REALLY have to want it, to part with that kind of $$

Quote from: Perry on July 03, 2009, 05:20

Stop using pirated Photoshop, I DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR YOUR PHOTOSHOP.

You don't. As with all pirated software and music, those people wouldn't buy the official product anyways.

Think again. It's the paying customers that pays all the Photoshops in the world.