Adobe Photoshop CS3: How much?!

Adobe Photoshop CS3 is available for preorder and will be shipping in the spring (based on the recent weather, this could mean any time between now and June). Now I need to find £163.32 for the upgrade, which is a positive bargain compared to £569.88 for the full version. To pour vinegar on the wound inflicted on my bank account, Adobe is offering free shipping... to people who spend more than £195. Since I don't qualify, it'll be an extra £6 to get the box delivered. Gngh.

Photoshop is incredibly powerful, and the new features look very cool. I'm keen to try the Smart Filters, which let you apply effects as overlays, without changing the underlying image. I'm also looking forward to the Auto-align Layers command, which should make it easier to combine the best parts of two or more photographs into a single image. Photoshop is the best program ever, and it's certainly the one I use most on my home PC.

Nevertheless, the price is starting to look silly. Adobe no longer allows cross-platform upgrades, so if I wanted to run Photoshop on my new Mac Mini, I'd have to pay the full £569.88. The Mac is currently selling for £578.99, so the software would cost just £9.11 less. To be fair, you'd want a more powerful Mac than mine to do Photoshop justice, but it seems odd that it's still so expensive. Computer hardware has become much cheaper over the last ten years, but Photoshop has been stuck at around £500 since the dawn of digital time.

Since I recently argued that it's reasonable to spend £500 on a lens, maybe I should be happy to invest the same in software. The lens will last much longer, though, and I'll have a better chance of selling it on if I want to upgrade. Where would you put your money?