Where to Buy Photoshop In UK ?

Hi All

This year I'm taking a big step up in the time and effort I spend on Photography, I'm fairly limited in my experiences with Pro-software for PP work.

Over the last few years I've done most of my PP with my Point & Shoot on a pretty basic program called MGI photosuite, It's taught me a lot but now I need to move on.

I've never owned a copy of Photoshop but have had a dabble or two with my images in Corel Photo-paint which I believe is fairly good but not as recognised and used as Photoshop.

Most people on this Forum use Photoshop so I feel if I can learn from others about my Photography the why not learn from others tips & techniques with Photoshop.

Okay I'm going on a bit now

I've no idea how much I should be paying for this software and where to purchase it, I see a lot of sellers on Ebay with cheap copies but thats all they are, cheap copies.

I want to stay on the right side of the law and have my own origional copy.

That is what I have done since owning a PC, If a software program is important to me I will not cut corners to get a copy.

So I'm looking for suggestions as to which online UK retailers have the best deals on Photoshop.

There seams to be that many spin-offs by Adobe that my brain is a bit fried as to what to buy.

Thanks for your time

With all Adobe software, you need to buy the right version - Windows or Mac.

If you want the full version of Photoshop, buy Photoshop CS2. Expect to pay around £460-480, including VAT.

Anything significantly cheaper than that is either pirate, an upgrade edition or an education/academic edition (useless unless you're a qualified user). You may be able to find an old copy of Photoshop for sale cheap, then buy the upgrade, but that is a potentially risky course, especially if the old copy of Photoshop is registered to someone else and the proper licence transfer paperwork isn't supplied, or it turns out that someone is selling their old version of Photoshop after upgrading, in breach of the licence agreement for the upgrade.


If you're happy with Photoshop Elements, buy Photoshop Elements - just under £60 including VAT. Version 3.0 is the latest for the Mac, version 4.0 for the PC.


If you have any use for other Adobe software, consider Creative Suite 2. It is more money to buy (and significantly more at upgrade time - around half the original purchase price, typically), but for what you get, it's a good deal.

For around £900, I got the full version of Creative Suite 2 Premium - full versions of Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, GoLive CS2 (may not have any future beyond CS2 now that Adobe have bought out Macromedia; they may decide to drop GoLive in favour of Dreamweaver) and Acrobat 7 Professional. This is around the cost of two of these applications - as I have use for all of it except really GoLive, it's worth it for me.

Creative Suite 2 Standard is cheaper, but doesn't include Acrobat, which I make heavy use of - I use Photoshop and Acrobat the most.


I buy most computer products from one of the major online suppliers - Misco, Insight, Inmac, eBuyer or Dabs.

David

Scottie,

Unless you are a real PS fiend, I would suggest that Elements would do you to start - versions 3 and 4 have the majority of the basic functionality of CS/CS2 and you can add the main missing features (such as curves and channel mixer) via plugins. It would save you spending afortune on CS2 and not using it to full potential. Only major drawback of Elements I have found so far is no scripting support.. If you then move to CS2 you can get it cheapr via an upgrade anyway...

and if you're a student of any description then you can get the educational version much cheaper.

Really? I'm a full time student at the moment, how much cheaper?

Thanks everyone for the info, I may reconsider buying the full package as I'm purely after tools for Post processing my images.

EOSAddict you can get it pretty cheap, £205 : http://www.student-software.co.uk/shop/pr​d322 as opposed to £510