Adobe is one of the largest software companies on the planet. The company founded in 1982 by Charles Geschke and John Warnock had sales of nearly $3 billion in 2009 and has approximately 8,715 employees worldwide. A company of this size is likely to have a large user base; in fact, more than 90% of creative professionals have Adobe Photoshop software on their desktops.
Some of the major Adobe software products are Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Premier Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Adobe Acrobat. Quite an impressive collection of software, which is quite essential for anyone involved in digital creative fields. The problem is that Adobe software is very expensive, so how can you save money on Adobe’s flagship products?
educational discounts
Adobe has a strong presence in the education market. Adobe likes to create new customers for its software as soon as possible and that means targeting schools, colleges and universities. Adobe knows that if people are trained to use their software from a young age, it means that employers/companies will have to provide the software that people have been trained on, which will undoubtedly be Adobe, and will be sold to them at a premium price. .
With this in mind, Adobe is willing to offer students up to 80% off regular retail price with its Adobe Student Edition software. So if you’re a student, you can buy Adobe software at incredibly low prices. Details on how to purchase student editions are available on the main Adobe site.
Free open source equivalents
If you just want to get the job done and aren’t concerned about the software you use, open source software may be the way to go. There are a number of free software packages that have similar features to Adobe’s flagship products. For example, a good equivalent to Photoshop would be the free GIMP, which allows photo/pixel based editing, similar to Photoshop. If you’re an illustrator or vector graphics artist, Inkscape is a free open source equivalent to Adobe Illustrator. If you’re looking for a free open source equivalent to Adobe Dreamweaver, NVU is more than capable of handling your web design requirements. A quick Google search will turn up many free or open source alternatives to Adobe software, so you don’t need to buy expensive software from Adobe to get the job done.
Adobe coupon sites
Fortunately, Adobe has a series of sales of its software throughout the year. It does this through discounts on major retail sites like Amazon and limited-time sales on its own site. It also releases a number of coupon codes for its software, which tend to vary in discount and the software they apply to. These coupons are usually short-lived, so you need to be on the alert when they are available. Fortunately, there are several coupon sites that have a web page dedicated to Adobe coupons. By regularly checking your favorite coupon sites, you can score an Adobe software deal.