There are now few things in life more certain than upgrades, death and taxes. A few months ago I decided I really had to upgrade my copy of Photoshop 6, which is now ancient. Having trotted off to Adobe's Online store I discovered that not only had Adobe jacked UK upgrade prices, which I already knew about from the furore on the web [1], but also they had changed their upgrade policy. In the past any version of Photoshop from v4 was OK. But Photoshop CS3, the current version and the only one they now sell, could only be obtained as an upgrade from Photoshop 7, CS or CS2. I could only buy the full retail product at an eyewatering £569.88.

Adobe clearly hasn't heard that most of the photography industry is in a tailspin. Most professionals are struggling not to spend money at the same time as they are being subjected to relentless price competition and deprived of the value of what they create by predatory publishers and mega-agencies. One reason I avoided Photoshop CS was Adobe's inclusion of Adobe Royalty Free into Bridge - a mechanism to assist creatives to access royalty free collections from within Photoshop and garner Adobe a slice of the profits. Why would I want to pay Adobe money to assist cannibalism?

To be perfectly honest, v7, CS, CS2 and CS3 mostly add features that I do not want nor need, and certainly are not worth paying £569.88 for. Bridge and Imageready are the major additions and are of no interest at all, I already use the excellent iMatch [2] for digital asset management.

Another reason is that I detest software that requires activation. Although every company that goes this route blathers on about it being fairer to paying customers, I have had plenty of trouble with it. My first encounter was with OCR c.1998, an extremely good but infuriating program for OCR of scanned text. I got very fed up having to email them every time I moved the program through successive hardware upgrades. It sometimes took 3 days for a response, and I have since deleted it in favour of a competitor that requires none of this nonsense. Windows XP Pro's activation has been a pain too, after a succession of hardware problems left me not only with a backlog of deadline work but also a non-working operating system. Having to sort that out over the phone meant I did not get to bed until 3am that night instead of 1.30am. I didn't pay MS to keep me up extra late, and if anything Adobe's version of activation has a more mixed reputation. [3]

Still there are a few improvements in later Photoshop versions: better 16bit support, the healing brush, and I can forsee Adobe Camera Raw or Lightbox becoming fairly unavoidable in the future.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed about 30 copies of Photoshop CS2 on eBay, all brand new, sealed, shrinkwrapped 'full retail product'. Most were from eBay powersellers with masses of positive feedback, and selling at £100-£150. I am very careful on eBay, and in 100+ transactions have never yet been ripped off despite a couple of close calls. And these CS2 looked absolutely authentic, as if Adobe had dumped a lot of obsolete stock into the reseller chain. I checked the comments of people who had bought this software, everybody was happy : 'product as described'. CS2 would do me fine. It had all the extra bits I'd actually use, so I bought one.

As soon as I opened the package I realised it was fine, authentic Adobe product. Phew, what a relief, another triumph for my shrewd and excellent judgement: PS CS2 for £110 instead of twice what my car is worth.

So I installed it. Everything went as you'd expect. I filled in the registration wizard, and it came back to say I had successfuly registered. Then it trundled off to Adobe and downloaded all the outstanding updates. And yes, the program worked. But what had become of activation, the loathsome procedure whereby Adobe allow you to actually use what you have paid for, and without which the software stops working after 30 days.? I hadn't seen an activation screen at all. The manual said it should appear on installation. So I tried 'activate' on the menu and absolutely nothing happened.

This was clearly not right, but some Googling revealed it happened sometimes. Adobe's tech support documents suggest a number of possible causes including conflicting software, antivirus products, or hardware issues ranging from lost sectors on the disk to a defective disk. They suggest fixing disk errors, formatting the disk, installing Windows fresh, then Photoshop. Then reinstall all your applications and data and see if it's OK. I wasn't terribly impressed by that prospect.

Next I installed it on my laptop to see if I could replicate the problem. It was exactly the same except installation of updates failed as well. Both machines run Norton Antivirus, have had disks partitioned using Partition Magic, and run some bits of Systemworks - all software on Adobe's list of potential activation-breakers. This was beginning to be irritating and turning into one of those PC sagas that eats weekends.

I then discovered that despite completing the registration wizard in CS2, it didn't seem to have created a product record at the Adobe site for me. Drat, yet another glitch.

Meanwhile, I'd been so pleased with myself discovering this money-saving opportunity that I'd placed a message on CIX [4] suggesting anyone who wanted a cheap CS2 should have a look at eBay. One chap had gone ahead and found exactly as I had - that registration and activation seemed to be broken. He had also noticed that keyboard shortcuts did not work. But he had rung Adobe support and been told that the serial number was invalid.

So too have I, now.

Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:24:53 +0200 (CEST)
From: Adobe English Customer Service <english-custserv@adobe.com>
To:  <Tonysleep@halftone.co.uk>
Subject: Invalid Serial Number  (KMM3021291I51L0KM)

Dear Mr. Sleep,

Your Customer Service Number is: --------

In regards to serial number: 1045-1084-5805-7432-9705-7296, please note that 
this is an unauthorised serial number and therefore, the product which you 
have may not be an authorised copy. Unfortunately we cannot register this 
product using this serial number. You will therefore not be able to receive 
technical support or other benefits.
We strongly recommend that you pass a copy of this letter to the dealer or 
distributor from whom you obtained the product in order to resolve this issue. 
In circumstances such as these your dealer is the appropriate contact.

Should you require any further information, please do not hesitate to 

Sarah Stahl
Adobe Customer Service
Tel: (UK) 02073650733
Tel: (Eire) 012421552
Fax: 0031 20 5820800
Email: english-custserv@adobe.com 

Both our copies are counterfeit product, it appears. Adobe admitted to me that there are ways in which authentic product can acquire invalid serial numbers, but they are usually returns. Also they said that they never dump obsolete product. After production ceases they store any remaining stock in case it is required as replacements. I read that as : shrinkwrapped and hacked software, to disable activation, can surely only be fakes.

What is remarkable is that these are not shabby boot sale knock-offs, they have exactly the same quality of production as Adobe's own product. Everything is included, shrinkwrapped packaging, a 410-page litho printed manual on coated stock, even stock and serial number labels. The CD printing is perfect, without a hint of second-generation anywhere. Neither of us could tell they were fakes, and worse, nor will dealers and resellers be able to do so unless there is something innately suspicious about their supplier.

I have been in touch with the eBay seller and don't propose naming him because he appears genuinely concerned and promises an immediate refund. Besides there are many sellers. I count 25 'new retail CS2' on sale via ebay.co.uk and 58 via ebay.com. I also looked at the German, French, Italian and Spanish eBay sites, but only found a couple of copies. There is no way to know whether it's only some, many or all eBay PS CS2 that are fakes, but there doesn't appear to be any way to tell until you try and register and activate them. It stands to reason that anyone counterfeiting this well has gone to substantial trouble and expense and will be producing a very large number of copies.

There is of course the likelihood that buyers won't care, so long as they get a cheap version of CS2 that doesn't need activating, that looks authentic and even includes a nice manual. If they return it, they risk difficulty in obtaining a refund, and may lose their money. The temptation is to collude and keep quiet. They may even kid themselves it is authentic but malfunctioning, as I did initially, but I think this is dangerous. We have no idea what other changes may have been made to the software, whether trojans or keyloggers have been added. Counterfeiting at this scale and quality is after all organised crime. I don't particularly want the mafia in my computer.

Presumably most people buying CS2 will actually do so in the belief they are getting the real thing, else they'd simply go and download a Warez copy and Keygen and avoid paying anything. If you Google for 'photoshop CS2 keygen download' you get 1.8m hits, and for CS3 2.7m hits. Aside from the illegality and immorality, who knows what else a hacker is going to install as an unwanted payload? But clearly, Adobe prices make this worth the risk for a great many people, most of whom would never have bought Photoshop anyway. Still, counterfeiting is different from Warez, aimed at people who don't actually want to steal but simply get a better deal than Adobe offers. On old product sold through an auction site by vendors with good track records, it's a plausible and tempting proposition pitched at people who do want to be honest and believe they are getting an opportunity to buy back into upgrade eligibility that Adobe has foreshortened with CS3.

Adobe estimate 4x-5x as many copies of Photoshop are pirated as are sold. Perhaps it is time they looked again at their pricing, upgrade policies and activation as a deterrent to illicit use, because all they seem to have achieved is a massive business opportunity for a better class of counterfeiter able to fool punters and dealers alike, and that will lose them many millions more than hacked copies off Bittorrent ever could.

Below are PDF's of Photoshop CS2 & CS3 software currently on sale via Ebay UK and Ebay USA. How many are legitimate?