alan little’s weblog

photoshop 8

31st October 2003 permanent link

Photoshop 8 is out, with support for 16 bit layers that may or may not be useful. I think it looks worth getting anyway, but I'm not exactly delighted that Adobe are following US software companies’ usual policy of blatantly ripping off foreigners. The upgrade from Photoshop 7 to Photoshop 8 is listed on adobe.com at $169.99. It’s worth it, there’s a lot of good stuff in there including one of the better converters on the market for raw files from digital cameras, which used to cost $99 on its own as an add-on to Photoshop 7.

But Adobe’s US online store will only ship to the US. I don’t want to risk getting a German language only version from adobe.de, so I look at their UK site. £139.99. WHAT? That’s 238 dollars. Now, quoted retail prices in Europe always include sales tax and in the US they don’t, so let’s add UK sales tax at 17.5% for a fair comparison, and $169.99 becomes $198. The residual “blatantly rip foreigners off” factor is still $40, or almost 25% of the price of the product. Bastards. Sod ’em. $40 isn’t a fortune, but it’s the principle of the thing. I’ll wait until my graphic designer friend in New York pays a visit and get him to bring a copy over. Or I could ask our next Russian visitor to pick up a pirate copy in Moscow - Adobe, I’m willing to buy a legitimate copy of your product at a fair price, but I’m not happy about being overcharged 25% just because I don’t happen to live in America.

related entries: Photography

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