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The new Adobe upgrade policy will certainly take many of us advanced amatuers out of the market for Photoshop. I normally upgrade on every three releases. I currently use CS3. So I am now forced to upgrade to CS5 before I can upgrade to the upcoming CS6. What I see here is greed on the part of Adobe and a complete disregard for their loyal users. While there are a number of other options for photo software on the market, I think that most of us photographers prefer Photoshop. This should certainly open the door to other software developers to introduce a product comparable to Photoshop at a reasonable price.

I encourage everyone who feels this policy is blatantly unfair to contact Adobe to voice your opinion.

Yes, this was big news in various forums on the web but surprisingly it seems to have died down a bit. Perhaps after the current discount for version 5.5 ends at the end of December and customers are left with only the full price option for CS6 there will be more negative reaction.

As much as everyone loves PS, this move may well force people to look elsewhere, even moreso than they do already.

The next best option to replace Photoshop would be Photoline 32 (not an attractive interface at all but supports most PS functions including CMYK and plug-ins), followed by Pixelmator (Mac only, no CMYK or plug-in support but most PS functions). And of course PaintShop Pro which many have used in place of PS anyway.

Free options include the cross-platform GIMP (of course) and Paint.NET (Windows only).

Adobe allowed me to update to CS6 from CS3 but I wish they hadn't as I later found out that CS6 is compatible with Windows XP and 7 but not Vista.

What happens under Vista with Photoshop CS6? Does it not start up?

Right, the Photoshop CS6 tech specs say:
•Microsoft® Windows® XP* with Service Pack 3 or Windows 7 with Service Pack 1

It does not mention Vista there. This is quite strange. Noone would expect that Adobe would drop support for Windows Vista.

You should try to get your Photoshop CS6 purchase reversed.

Or better yet all around, upgrade to Windows 7. I don't think anybody really liked Vista!