CS5 non-student version - reliable vendors?

I'd like to buy CS5 for a Mac but unfortunately have no means of qualifying, even indirectly, for the student edition so although I'm a raging, shouting and extremely bitter about it, I'm going to have to pay for the full price edition

I see Buy.com has it for $549 or thereabouts. I have no experience of this retailer at all - would I be foolish to buy it from there rather than from Adobe directly?

Or perhaps, is there an alternative reliable retailer who comes in under Adobe's price?

buy.com is legit I have purchased many things from them

That's definitely a good price if it's an "official" Buy.com product. Amazon's official price is $660, which is more in line with Adobe pricing. I wonder why it's discounted like that at Buy.com? I have done business with them with no problems, I just wonder what the deal is?

I checked and it's not actually a Buy.com deal, it comes from an outfit called Dealsaleonline:

http://www.buy.com …2&sku=214680065​&buy=1&c=1

I guess it's on the "list" for Buy.com, it's just interesting because their other vendors list it at similar to the Amazon price or more.

WHat do you want to buy, photoshop or a suite?

CS5 is simply a revision level that adobe retools every now and then.

Basically, if you want to have a full range of photo editing, all you need is photoshop. But LR and photoshop is obviously more ideal because lightroom is streamlined and has things that photoshop just can't do in terms of smoothness of batch editing and how the LR library handles things (which IMO is MUCH better than PS for photo).

Lightroom + Photoshop will give you more capability than you know what to do with. Dont worry about purchasing a suite because you dont need things like Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, After Effects, etc... Just go for photoshop and save some money.

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote in post #11221182
I'm not clear on the workflow but think I just need Lightroom and Photoshop.
With my simple hobby needs, I can't see the benefit of Bridge etc but don't mind admitting that I could easily be wrong.

It's cool, Bridge comes as part of Photoshop -- it is the browser as well as a basic organizer and "front end" to numerous Photoshop utilities. It will be there, even if you never use it!

The Lightroom->Photoshop workflow can center around your Lightroom workflow, which many of us do (use Lightroom for all our basic processing and only open Photoshop for special needs), or, like some, you may find some of the Photoshop tools and capabilities to be important to your workflow. Some people use Lightroom for the Library tools and maybe or maybe not its other tools, and then use Photoshop for their developing.

Either way can work just fine, it's going to be finding out what works for you. I'd say it would be very much to your advantage to learn as much about each program, learn to get as much as you can out of Lightroom and at least learn the basics of Photoshop as thoroughly as possible, and you won't regret it and can make informed decisions about your workflow and processing needs.

Hey, there are a lot of good knowledgeable people on here...and then goofoffs like me...

No family members in any kind of school...?

If I didnt already use my academic keys up Id have no problem buying the entire suite for people, but alas, I already bought 2 master suites and thats that... One for me, one for a friend.

LiberationFrequency wrote in post #11225040
If I didnt already use my academic keys up Id have no problem buying the entire suite for people, but alas, I already bought 2 master suites and thats that... One for me, one for a friend.

Hmm, I don't want to bicker about this, and I'd suggest you not reply to this, but I believe passing an educational license off to a friend is a violation of the license. If you question that, rather than discuss it here, you might want to check with Adobe or ask on the Adobe users forum.

Many vendors use the "honor" system for edu licensing... I'm just saying.

From my understanding, if the license is not for commercial purposes, all that matters is who registers it. He registered the software and its 100% fine - a school, who unfortunately is no longer ranked in the big ten due to recent losses in football (f u crimson tide), considers it fine too.

Academic licenses are just portals for expanded distribution. Im all for Adobe making money on their product, but there is no need to get anal about academic licenses because everyone I know that has used academic licenses goes to work where they have CS5 anyway, so it literally ended up not mattering who I gave the key to. Who buys Adobe Master suite and doesn't get into some form of job that has it anyway?

GL finding your copy - I own mine legit and it is a really good investment to be honest. The CS5 photoshop is a really mature product as it has been around years (catalyst and after effects, on the other hand, is not a mature product). You will be able to produce infinitely diverse styles of pictures for years to come so I believe it is worthwhile to buy legit.

I get CS5 Master Collection for $100 with student/teacher discount