Its expensive because theres alot more to photoshop than most people see,
How often does a home user have to drop a folder with a few hundrew pics onto a droplet command to batch process everthing with a certain set of operations?
I use photoshop everyday at work for texture painting etc for 3d, and even though I have CS, I could just as easily get away with a lower version (just nice to have the porche)
on a side note Painter is a real cool painting program and PSP is plenty good for most 'crop, add filter, colour in, save' people.
If you want expensive buy a licence for a 3d engine
