Ah, Russia–home to 50-rouble copies of your favorite Adobe apps. Photoshop team member Heather Dolan recently returned from a service trip there & reports that pirated software remains ridiculously easy to obtain. When a street merchant learned that she was from Adobe, his response was to double his asking price for the Creative Suite! (You’ve kind of got to admire the chutzpah…)
Even so, Adobe’s business grew by 260% in Russia this past year. And what’s more fun, Photoshop was honored at the KinoBlender film awards. Moscow-based Adobe marketer Olga Manannikova writes, "This award was conferred on the brand ‘Adobe Photoshop’ for most often and successful unintended mentioning in Russian movies in 2007." The team attended the event & got a groovy little trophy & everything. [Via Winston Hendrickson]
We have quite a few Russian folks on the Photoshop team (Irina, Domnita, Nikolai, Iouri, Alex, plus others who’ve moved on). I asked localization czar
Iouri Tchernoousko how to render the product name in cool-looking Cyrillic characters. Ta-da:
ФОТОШОП
Iouri noted, "In Russian, you say it pretty much just like you would in English, but in a much lower tone of voice. :)"
As long as we’re on the subject,
- I dug this illustration in the NYT, from artist Valentin Kalininskiy. Achieved with the help of ФОТОШОП, maybe?
- Check out this crazy monitor-testing routine. (Do Russian Circuit Cities keep crossbows lying around? And whose consumer electronics need to survive ball-peen hammer attack?) I’m sure I could ask a friend to translate, but the language barrier adds to the inexplicable fun. 🙂 [Via Ellis Vener]
Yes it Photoshop. But here not only a collage. Here it is a lot of figure. I draw in PS much.
For example http://gallery.ru/watch?a=bi9-c3s
http://albcache.gallery.ru/gallery/0000004401-16916-570736-.jpg
[Super cool; thanks for writing. (What a small world, eh? :-)) –J.]
Here in Argentina is the same situation, and i supose that in all over south America too.
The comonly price for pirated software is 10 pesos (3 dollars in the current change)… Sincerely, I prefer download it and make my own dirty job.
But ФОТОШОП is not the only popular Russian word. There is an other one: УПЯЧКА 🙂 And the Russian language is very similar to Albanian. Exactly the same :))
Hi john ….
i guess you do n’t know about prices in north africa .
i have to say adobe must extend it’s exist in north africa .
lol 🙂
i guess you do n’t know about prices in north africa .
hm.. and some more on the point:
Fireworks: Фаерфоркс
Flash: Флеш
Dreamweaver: Дримвывер)))))))
[Heh–cool! –J.]
north africa is good, i bet)
oh, good-God, the caricature is wonderful!! thanx a lot)
We’ve got the same problem in Poland. Prices are very high. Foe example new photoshop – 3000 zl. about two months work.
I hope the guys from Adobe quickly learn the Russian language? :))
>> Flash: Флеш
No, that’s NOT correct. This must be:
Flash: Флэш.
because Russian “Флеш” is closer to the English “Flesh”, not “Flash”.
I’ve been struggling for the correct spelling (“Флэш”) for 5 years. With some effect, but now I see — the struggle continues 🙂
[Just don’t spell it “Flush.” 😉 –J.]
Well. Must admit, Russia is ‘divided’ into 2 “parts”. First are big cities: Moscow, St.Petersburg and 10-20 others. Average designers/developers get about 1000$-3000$ there (as freelancers all over Russia), so they can afford CS and other expensive tools. (Even so, some of them prefer spending a day or two downloading “Фотошоп” from torrent).So, other part of our country are middle-sized towns where average worker get 6000-20000 roubles = 240$-800$ per month (of course, there are lots of exceptions).
You have to work from 1 to 4 month’s only to have CS4 Web Standart.(Actually, without eating, paying for heating, electricity, phone) But Russians are not poor…you can live here with 800$/month and that is normal! (NOT in Moscow and other big cities).
But this medal has another, positive side, educational – we feel free to download some software “for free” and try to gain some skills. After that, we are able to get a job and work on legal copy of your software. What about me, I’m 16, I have some skills – 3dsmax, php, Photoshop(Фотошоп, “Fotoshop”), Dreamweaver(Дримвейвер, “Drimveyver”), Fireworks (Фаерворкс, “Faervorx”), Corel Draw…but what if I had to pay for this? I’m learning now about Flex/RIA/AIR, trying to write something in AS 3.0 X-). I have to run Flash CS3/Flex Builder 3 on 256 RAM, and it’s a long process , but, in a month or two of training, I’ll be able to get a freelance job and make a little upgrade, I hope. Finally, I’ve promised myself to buy all products, which will help me to earn =)And sorry for english, if any X)
But this medal has another, positive side, educational – we feel free to download some software “for free” and try to gain some skills. After that, we are able to get a job and work on legal copy of your software. What about me, I’m 16, I have some skills – 3dsmax, php, Photoshop(Фотошоп, “Fotoshop”), Dreamweaver(Дримвейвер, “Drimveyver”), Fireworks (Фаерворкс, “Faervorx”), Corel Draw…but what if I had to pay for this?