Adobe ripping off UK again with latest CS3 family software?

[Bob Crabtree]

Adobe today formally announced the upcoming launch of new-generation, dual-platform versions of most of its key creative applications.

These CS3-family Mac and Windows products are being sold individually and in money-saving bundles but, as usual, the prices that Adobe expects UK purchasers to pay are massively more than it's asking in the USA - whether for bundles or individual apps.

Get all the gory details and let us know how you feel - are the price differentials justified or are we being ripped off in a massive way?

[Gordy]

I've long since stopped being surprised when companies do this.

I expect that you won't get the real answer when you ask them.

Its simple: "Because they can get away with it..."

[Steve]

I bet they have the audacity to ship us a version that gives us the following installation options:

French
German
Spanish
Italian
US English

Because after all, that extra cash needs to cover exporting the product and the costly business of creating a localised language pa... oh.

[Sinizter]

Havent they realised that there is no such thing as US English ? Only some bastardi"s"ed spellings ?

[Nick F]

Good old rip-off Britain. I've got one word - GIMP

[overscan]

Just checked on amazon.com. Ship to USA only.... nice! Am seriously considering buying and getting it shipped to a USA address and forwarded (seen someone offering service for a tenner plus UK delivery).

Would be interested to know if they sell a different version in the US. I'm sure from what I've seen, CS2 in the UK appeared to be an international product with dictionaries for all major languages inc proper english?

[CAL3H]

Fair play: ask the question - unfortunately expect the usual "we take pricing very seriously and market our product strategically in each region of the world in which we sell it".

[Dorza]

Good old rip-off Britain. I've got one word - GIMP

Or even Paint.net for that matter if you can't use GIMP. UK prices like usual are hideous, I'm not suprised. I would be more suprised if they were reasonable prices in all honesty.

[Bob Crabtree]

I went along to the press bash tonight and - though the whole place was heaving and it was impossible to look at all the apps I wanted to (or ask the questions I wanted to ask) - I did manager to spend time looking at some of the new features found in the two new versions of Photoshop and was worryingly impressed.

It does seem to be a great bit of work.

I'd have felt a lot better about the idea of folk being ripped off if I thought I could just turn round and say, buy x or y instead but Adobe now has so many apps that seem to be leading the way.

It also has to be said that, on the image side, Bridge is massively improved - though I didn't get a chance to see how it performed when cataloguing video (the last version I looked at was an utter dog with video; slow and pointless).

And InDesign looked to be streaking even further ahead of Quark Xpress than it was in the previous version.

I certainly do not like Adobe's pricing policy but there is no doubt in my mind that the company is continuing to turn out some very powerful creative tools - right across the board - and also making significant advances in integrating its apps so that, eventually they will work seamlessly together.

There is still some way to go but there is still a lot to be impressed by.

For instance, the Extended version of Photoshop CS3 now lets you work with video (and a whole lot of other types of media) and has some very powerful tools for editing footage, for jobs such as removing dust and dirty or other things that catch the eye and you'd like not to be there.

[Bob Crabtree]

Good old rip-off Britain. I've got one word - GIMP

The problem with programs such as GIMP, which rely on additional run-time stuff to work, is that they're not necessarily straightforward to get going.

I just went to carry out the first phase of the GIMP installation and pulled back cos the message below appeared and there is no way I want anything to happen to my Roxio disc-burning stuff:

Setup has found some DLL files, which may conflict with programs that rely on GTK+ 2. To prevent such conflicts, Setup can automatically rename these files.

Note: Renaming these files may cause other programs to stop working. If you encounter such program, please read the FAQ at <http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/faq.html> for possible solutions.

Following is the list of files, which would be renamed:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShared\zlib1.dll

If you choose to rename these files, their extension will be changed to .dll.off.

It happened that the original link to the FAQ didn't work (I've substituted a good URL above) but when I did eventually locate the relevant section, I was far from impressed by the explanation:

# The GIMP installer informs me about conflicting DLL and recommends to rename them. What does this mean?
# Another program installed libraries with the same name as those used by Gimp where they don't belong. If these files are incompatible with the libraries required by the GIMP, the GIMP may either fail to load, or work incorrectly.

Trying to think why the installer might imagine that it has more right to stick something in a Roxio folder than Roxio has has.

Ho hum.

Oh but Paint.NET went on in one go without any bother - and I'll be trying that out in the coming days.

[Dorza]

The problem with programs such as GIMP, which rely on additional run-time stuff to work, is that they're not necessarily straightforward to get going.

Oh but Paint.NET went on in one go without any bother - and I'll be trying that out in the coming days.

I found GIMP far to complicated to use when trying to achieve even simple tasks which take no time at all in PS. If you can use it, it is a productive environment that can produce some very nice results, but I could never get into it.

I have paint.net installed but haven't thumbed through it properly yet, but I will say this ...from what I have used of it, it does look like a very powerful and promising free alternative to PS or PSP which is also relatively straight forward in its use. From my limited use of it I have found it no harder than PS to use. It has a lot of features however the one major issue I have come across is that your canvas is fixed and doesn't look like it can be windowed as it can be in PS. This is a matter of personal preference I know, but I like the way PS windows individual projects.

[LazyGit]

I never even realised this occured. I was used to SNES games being pound for dollar when I was a kid. I do know a lot of hardware is the same way today but I assume that is a result of the fact that there is much higher demand in the US so more parts are shipped. However, when it comes to software, all that's needed is some data to be burned to a disc. It does not cost 25% more to burn a disc in the UK than in the US. I noticed today that the same occurs with Vista. How can this be justified and why is the government not doing something about it?

[mtyson]

Who needs these latest versions? I'm still using Photoshop 6 and Illustrator CS1. I only use Photoshop for prepping photos for Illustrator/Quark, so I think even v3 would have done the job, if I hadn't found v6 going cheap.
As for Illustrator, it's the most reliable tool for Press-ready CMYK or spot colour files that I need to use in my job. I've enjoyed trying (and have bought) may other new and alternative vector illustration programs, but they all fall when it comes to sending the press-ready files to a print company. Also if I hadn't found CS1 going cheap I think v9 would have been fine, as it has transparency and symbols in it's feature set.

[Dorza]

How can this be justified and why is the government not doing something about it?

They get more money from the VAT thats why.

Who needs these latest versions?

Exactly most won't need the extra features, they won't come close to scratching the surface even. Besides Adobe are developing a free online version of PS which will probably be handy for those who would normally use PS illegally. I don't know how much of the full version will be implemented or how fast it will be, but it could be useful.

[zag2me]

If we had the Euro we wouldn't have this problem

[Stoo]

If we had the Euro we wouldn't have this problem

No, we'd have even more...