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Cheapest path to a LEGAL version of Photoshop
Peeps Chicken
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I did a search, but saw no relevant topics.
I'm currently legally using Adobe Photoshop 5.0 Limited Edition. Don't laugh.
I would like to purchase a legal copy of Photoshop. I'm not a student or a teacher, so I don't have access to the education discount. I don't believe my archaic copy is eligible for an upgrade.
I tried looking at eBay, and good god. It looks like a WoW gold seller fiesta. In any case, I'm pretty sure those are pirated copies, even if I wanted to deal with them.
Full retail price is a little out of my price range... has anybody found a cheaper non-education discount way to legally obtain Photoshop.
Side question: I really only want something for minor photo manipulation and to work with my Nikon DSLR's RAW format, which my puny version of PS can't do. Would Photoshop Elements do the trick? That's a manageable price. How gimped is it compared to full Photoshop for a basic user?
I'm currently legally using Adobe Photoshop 5.0 Limited Edition. Don't laugh.
I would like to purchase a legal copy of Photoshop. I'm not a student or a teacher, so I don't have access to the education discount. I don't believe my archaic copy is eligible for an upgrade.
I tried looking at eBay, and good god. It looks like a WoW gold seller fiesta. In any case, I'm pretty sure those are pirated copies, even if I wanted to deal with them.
Full retail price is a little out of my price range... has anybody found a cheaper non-education discount way to legally obtain Photoshop.
Side question: I really only want something for minor photo manipulation and to work with my Nikon DSLR's RAW format, which my puny version of PS can't do. Would Photoshop Elements do the trick? That's a manageable price. How gimped is it compared to full Photoshop for a basic user?
Peeps Chicken on
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Anyways, without doing too much research, there is this: https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
Dunno if it can read RAW. There is also Lightroom, from Adobe. I don't think you need PS withit, and it's meant more for digital photography.
The free Google Picasa can handle RAW, though I haven't used it in awhile. I believe it offers some editing functions, probably not too in depth.
I would try demos of Lightroom and Photoshop, to see which works better for you. You can get at least 30 days free on each one I think. If Lightroom works, you can get it for a retail price of about what you'd pay for a student version of the suite which would include photoshop.
EDIT: GIMP is awful and nobody should use it.
The cheapest way to get a newer version of Photoshop is to go through a university store and get it at an "education" price. I'm pretty sure they've ditched their actual education licenses for non-volume sales, so it's legal for production use.
The problem is, you can only get the full suite like that and you're still looking at a $400 bill.
If you aren't in school or aren't a member of some alumni then find someone who is and has access to a college software store and get them to buy it for you.
There's no reason to pay for Photoshop unless you're a professional.
Yeah, I was going to suggest this. That way you can get the student discount price, which is the cheapest legal way I can see to get this software.
Technically speaking, this probably wouldn't be a legal copy, because the license probably requires that you actually be a student or a teacher.
I could be wrong, regardless, Elements is probably worse than GIMP or Paint.NET in terms of getting real work done.
That's violating the license. But it's not a violation of law. A copy would be illegal if you stole it from a store or broke copyright law by downloading a copy.
As an owner of a copy of both CS2 and CS3, purchased legitimately from my college, I can verify that at least in CS3, there is no actual "educational" clause anywhere in the licensing.
The only true "educational license" is when they do bulk key distribution for setting up computer labs, etc... which no individual would have access to, student or not.