Banned? Me? You almost gave me a heart attack. So you are not allowed to have downloaded Photoshop on your computer?
How bout being here in Baghdad i got CS4 for $10 from one of the local nationals shop's its come with everything plus sum, its kinda like a black edition kinda but it comes with serial and everything u need.
The discount depends on the location you purchase it at. I got my cs2 at my universities store for 175.
Pirated mine, not even gonna lie. I believe that if you are going to use Photoshop for corporate/business purposes then you should get a genuine license to receive other benefits, but people who use it just as a hobby don't really have to buy it. Not saying piracy is moral, but at some point it comes down to whether you wanna spend your money on something that you will stop using after some amount of time.
Well I'm going to be honest, I bought mine; but I know A LOT of people who didn't. Technically I'm STILL breaking the law (only a very minor one) because my brother bought it with his university student license but let's me use it. It's not a big deal. Now I'm not going to lie, pirating it IS tempting and you'll almost never get spyware if you use a mac (like me) but the dis-advantages are that you can't use it for profit. Since companies looking to hire you want you to have an authentic serial. So I'm stuck using CS2 while the vast majority gets CS4 for free. But hopefully when CS5 comes out I'll have enough money to buy the whole suite (just the main tools though) and get started as a freelance designer I guess. But that's too far ahead to think about now :grin: as for pricing; the amount of work put into photoshop is great, yes, BUT if you look at CS2 and CS3 the core principles have unchanged mostly it's a slew of minor changes and some visual and productivity related overhauls. At it's core photoshop doesn't cost that much to manufacture and if they sold it at a cheaper price it would probably make them MORE money. However the expensive price is mostly for prestige, so that companies buying feel like it's a real utility for professionals NOT a consumer targeted, mass-marketed, emo-picture tool. Well that's enough of my rant :tongue: