60% of Photoshop Users are PIRATES!
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot,
Drink up, me ‘earties, yo ho.
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot,
Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho.
So here it is… the one week results from our previous poll on software piracy. In that short time, we've had nearly 500 photographers cast their votes and the outcome is quite interesting. It looks like Adobe's high-end photo editing software packages (like Photoshop and Lightroom) are hot items in the pirated software market.
I'm not here to make judgments or anything — I'm just presenting the results from our little study. I'd also like to mention that my computer is 100% free of pirated or “borrowed” software and that the poll results are no indication of my own habits.
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Each of the results below have two graphs. The first is a measure of how many of us use a particular piece of software: users versus non-users. The second graph takes the users and splits them into pirates and non-pirates. Also, I'm going to leave the polls running for a while to see how things progress over time.
PHOTOSHOP USERS
Wow… I expected the number of Photoshop pirates to be high, but not quite that high! 58%?!? So for every legal copy of Photoshop, there's a pirated counterpart… and then some! An equally interesting observation from the poll is that 87% of the people who read this blog are Photoshop users of some sort. I'm sure we represent a higher density population of Photoshoppers, but my guess is that well over 50% of digital photographers have access to Photoshop.
LIGHTROOM USERS
Although Lightroom isn't quite as popular as Photoshop with the general public (with only 58% of the voters), the users of Lightroom are just as willing to pirate the software. I assumed that Lightroom would be less pirated because it's newer software and because the price is slightly lower than that of Photoshop. I assumed wrong. Then again, if you're going to pirate a copy of Photoshop, why not Lightroom too?
OTHER SOFTWARE USERS
We have quite a few “other software” users in the mix too. I didn't break down the polls into every piece of software on the market, so I clumped everything other than Photoshop and Lightroom into this category. Interestingly, the rate of piracy (at 38%) is much lower than with the high-end Adobe products. I can't imagine that other software would be more difficult to steal, so this lower number is probably a factor of popularity, price, and availability.
FREE & OPEN SOURCE USERS
And out of the four groups in the poll, this was the only one with absolutely no piracy. Go figure. I'm actually impressed at how many people use free and open source software for photo editing — 64%! And only 19% of those are using the software that came with their cameras. The rest is all open source and freeware/shareware. Good for you guys! Although, there's probably some percentage of free software users who have pirated copies of commercial software.
What do you guys think? Are the results surprising? Should Adobe care about this? I'm sure they're aware of Photoshop and Lightroom being pirated, but I wonder what their position is on the topic.
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duaego
December 29, 2009There are dozens of phony Adobe products all over the eBay. Some CS4 Ex
tended pirated copies are going for less than $200.00 and, these counterfeits are coming in from Southern Europe but, most of these scam-diggers are straight from the boats sailing from China. A belligerent act of war in my book!
Adobe maintains that only PhotoShop CS4 Extended that come from an “Authorized Reseller” of Adobe products are able to be registered and used with the online benefits. Therefore, one never really knows if the installed copy can be registered and work beyond the second time the program is started. The “Serial Number” is what you need to use the program. These numbers are available on the phony clones packages – but, once Adobe’s massive computers find it to be a bogus number . . . ZAP! The program will not work on the next time you open it.
I was burned personally on two occasions with purchases on the eBay. I have heard from dozens of buyers that experienced the same while trying to save a little money by using the eBay. eBay and PayPal are little help in this. However, they did see that I was refunded over $500.00 in wasted purchases.
After all that . . . I ended up buying Adobe Creative Suite 4 – Master Collection straight from Adobe’s website. $2500.00 !
john harris
luis s
January 27, 2010LOL adobe knows that there software is pirated and is ok with that . They even mentioned it in press conference. This is the reason behind it. A million people pirate it in the industry and become great at the software. Of those million a percentage gets jobs in the field requiring the use of an editing software. Employer buys photoshop instead of another software because the new employees are already comfortable with it. ya see Photoshop was always meant as a pro tool for professionals and companies so everyone pirating the software is just seen as training the companies dont have to pay for and a way of photoshop taking top billing as the editing software of choice.
Dick
February 2, 2010If the tools are great the increased productivity pays for itself.
tommy
February 5, 2010Adobe does not market to the amateur… at ALL. They are company that makes PROFESSIONAL tools. Asking them to lower the price to something like $200-$300, as mentioned above, is ridiculous.
if we are amateur maybe coral draw is better option
Walter H
February 9, 2010Maybe Adobe is not so stupid. They charge enough so that one purchase pays for ten, at their cost. who’s stealing from whom?
Ethics?
February 16, 2010A lot of people want to justify their personal loss based on their morals and fear. How many of you “graphic designers” or photographers are selling your work to horrible companies? (You’d have to to afford your investment). I bet a ton of you are airbrushing natural blemishes off of nude models. Hail the pirates! Photoshop should be handed out like crayons to increase the collective creative potential. Point is, I am 60% more interested in what the thieves create with it than the professionals. PirArt.