The cost of Photoshop - reasonable or extortionate?
I have heard time and time again that the cost of Photoshop is too high, which invariably comes from students and non-professional designers, but lets just say that I have heard it mentioned on the grapevine by some not-so-reputable professional design outfits too - that could easily afford to buy it and no-doubt make a-lot of money out of it!
The fact of the matter is that you pay for what you get - if you want professional tools, you have to pay professional prices. To put this is perspective, on the grand scale of design applications Photoshop is actually one of the cheapest. Just about any design job will have some elements that have gone through Photoshop at one stage or another - where as other software is usually specifically designed for a single task or process. For instance, the ill-fated Quark XPress is nearly double the price of Photoshop and venturing into the world of professional 3D software sees prices many times more than Photoshop. My point is that you would probably use Photoshop to prepare your images for Quark layouts and you would probably generate some textures or bump maps for use in your 3D application. You see - Photoshop touches many, many areas of design!
The way I see it is that from a relatively modest investment I can very quickly recoup the initial outlay for Photoshop and indeed make a huge profit from using this software. I get stable, updated, reliable software that works perfectly rather than some flakey copy that doesnt actually function correctly or a beta version that doesnt have all the features. As I use it on virtually every design job I do, even if its just for approval JPEGs I need to know that I can always rely on it. Therefore I consider this a very worthy investment.
Piracy ultimately damages the future development of our favourite application too, removing valuable research and development revenue from Adobe. I know we have all heard this one before, but it is true! If you cant afford to buy Photoshop you shouldnt be using it and probably dont actually need all its functionality - that is the bottom line.
There are plenty of other reasonable alternatives such as GIMP (free) that will perform almost all the tasks that you will need Photoshop for, so you should use this whilst you save up for Photoshop.
Adobe have tried to accommodate the needs of home users to a certain extent by releasing Photoshop Elements. This is a much cheaper version of Photoshop, only lacking the high end features that are mostly only used by professionals. I think they could add to this by introducing a cheaper licensing program for students - I am aware they already do educational discounts, but I think this just applies to educational faculties rather than the students themselves that want to use Photoshop at home. All design students should have a good grasp of Photoshop - they will need the knowledge as they move into professional design studios.
September 27th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
I think photoshop is a must-have, and no, I think the price is fair.
For the “creation” of graphics, I don’t think there is an alternative worthy of replacing photoshop.
But when all that is needed are things like cropping, colour adjustments, levels etc… then things like the Gimp, Picasa etc… are sufficient (and lighter).
September 27th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Yes Ross - I agree. For the pro designer there is no other tool that quite has everything you need apart from Photoshop. However, for more casual users Photoshop is overkill!