Comments on: Software Piracy

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:49:09 +0000

What some people do not realise is that in lot of countries (say, in Asia, Africa or or Eastern Europe) a copy of PS might cost something like 6 month income fo a working person- that would be equivalent to $15-$20,000 price in the US.

I do not have statistics but I guess the majority of the PS users, both legitimate and pirate, are amateur photographers.

Now, ask yourself, how many people would pay $15,000 for a piece of software to use for a hobby? And what would be percentage of the illegal use if it is priced that high?

Quite a few years ago I worked for a large software vendor and this was a problem we faced while moving to international markets – how to provide local pricing attractive to buy rather than steal the products, and how to avoid a reexport (and there was no ebay at the time but the problem was real ). There were no simple answers.

Microsoft, Autodesk and others face the same problems as Adobe does all the time and the solution is not yet found.

As to the alternatives, I quite agree that PS is the best software around and is a standard. However PSE and GIMP (which I use) or Photoimpact (which my kids use and love) would work well too. After trial we would puchase Lightroom which provide us with storage and workflow tools for a reasonable price and would cover probably 90% of our needs.

And by the way reason people pirate PS is a availability of training. You could probably find 1000s of tutorials on the web and very few for other products.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:16:45 +0000

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a high-quality program...and much cheaper. That's for sure. It also integrates well with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

By: John

John — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:23:16 +0000

Another point to make about the demographic of likely photoshop piraters is that since they’re not professionals, they’re not as likely to even need many of the advanced features. PS Elements seems to come bundled with anything and everything these days and I’ve thrown out more than a handful of legal copies myself in the last year. You can produce professional quality images in Elements.

By: Arno

Arno — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:48:03 +0000

Let me know what you think!

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:42:59 +0000

Thanks, Arno!

By: Arno

Arno — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:36:23 +0000

Invite is sent

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:14:07 +0000

Very cool. Thanks for the info, Arno. I’ve actually not heard of Aviary before.

I’d appreciate a BETA invite, if you don’t mind sharing. I’m sure you have my address…any of them will work…but scott@thelightroomlab.com is just fine.

By: Arno

Arno — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:06:43 +0000

I agree that Adobe seriously overprices their products. And especially the price differences on the different continents (mentioned in a different post already) are a serious pain in the back side. But you get an excellent product for it. And industry standard product.
And Adobe holds the monopoly at this moment. QuarkXPress is pretty pushed out of the market, because they overpriced their ONE product so much that Adobe’s Suite looked cheap in comparison.
So… What are we complaining about?

And prices are NEVER an excuse for piracy.
We don’t want people to steal our photographs of our websites either, do we?

But… By the way…
Now that we’re talking about it…

There might be a very good alternative.
For people who can’t afford the bling-bling, the great people behind Worth1000 have developed and are still developing an online suite of tools like Photoshop and Illustrator and it works like a charm.
It works within your webbrowser, so you don’t need to install any additional software (except for maybe a Flash plugin or something the like). It’s very intuitive, works in very big lines like Photoshop and Illustrator (with layer masks, and the whole 9 yards) and you can access it from anywhere where you have internet connection.

Where can you find it?
http://www.a.viary.com
A whole set of tools for you to try out and if you like it, for a very agreeable price.

If anyone’s interested, I have a good number of BETA-invites to give away still.
Send me a mail (arnoATfromadifferentangleDOTnet) if you want one.

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:00:59 +0000

Those are certainly valid points. The amount of material presented in upgrades does vary. I’m curious to see how CS4 is accepted as most of the major changes appear to be usability- and optimization-related as opposed to huge impact features such as those in CS3. (I am fairly excited about content-aware scaling, however.)

I do agree with your point on Lightroom 1. I was an Aperture user from its launch date and really enjoyed it. My switch to Lightroom was a big drug out and lacked enthusiasm. I think Lightroom 2 has done a good job of addressing some of those bugs from version 1. Still a ways to go, though.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:54:30 +0000

yes it is necessary for Adobe to update their products from a marketing perspective, but to me CS2 was a minor update over CS. It felt like Adobe was testing out their newly found interface on the general public, they both felt like pre-release beta’s to me. They became bloated and very resource hungry.

To be honest with you I felt very disappointed after those upgrades (CS3 was a different story) And I felt like I should be looking for a alternative and my money back. Even lightroom 1 was a very bug prone program, for the same price you can buy a whole operating system.

What I am trying to say is that there is almost no alternative to using Adobe products, they have the monopoly in the computing design area, which is a huge market and to me they are over charging for their products.

By: Scott Rouse

Scott Rouse — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:50:12 +0000

I agree that unstable software can be quite frustrating. The continued product cycle of updates, of course, is necessary from a marketing/commercial standpoint for Adobe (and other software manufacturers).

I’ve been fairly happy with the improvements/upgrades/etc in Photoshop, but have personally don’t have a lot of experience with Illustrator.

Because I am an instructor, I keep pretty up-to-date on which versions I’m using/teaching, but I understand that can be tough for other end-users.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:26:00 +0000

All valid points, I have a legal copy of the web suite which cost me a fortune – I do not mind paying the initial up-front cost of the suite, it is the constant updating of the software that has to be updated. My main program is Illustrator, and version 10 was the best version ever IMO and since then it has been buggier than ever and crashes more and more often. I had to update my software because I was getting artworks from other designers who were using the latest version, cough up another few hundred dollars for nothing. Not to mention the time lost from the crashing; And all the plugins that do not work. Adobe definitely made it tempting for me to pirate it.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:52:06 +0000

An interesting point that I, admittedly, didn’t consider.

I agree that availability of the software or educational opportunities using the software should exist in these emerging economies and that the $600+ price tag is unrealistic for those on that kind of salary. That still doesn’t, in my mind, make theft/piracy ok.

I certainly don’t have the answer, but would love to continue a discussion on software availability in emerging economies.

Thoughts?

By: gregorylent

gregorylent — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:42:46 +0000

sort of a blind and reactionary (is that redundant?) article… 600 dollars is two months salary in india, rent and a couple of children and food and school fees eats most of it … piracy is a great boon in this circumstance … made thousands of customers, too …

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:15:57 +0000

That’s a really good point, Brian. I probably took it a bit too personally in my article, but the theft thing does make me angry.