That’s tiny, he thought. Suspiciously tiny.
The first result glowed invitingly: “Softonic — Trusted since 1996.” He clicked.
But excitement overpowered caution. He double-clicked the installer. A progress bar raced to 100% in seconds, and then—nothing. No Photoshop icon. No desktop shortcut. Just a flicker of a command prompt window and a new browser tab: “Congratulations! You’ve won a free antivirus scan.” That’s tiny, he thought
Weeks later, after paying a technician to clean his system, Arjun discovered the truth: Adobe had never authorized free downloads of Photoshop 7.0. Softonic, once a reputable archive, had become a minefield of misleading buttons and bundled junk. And even if he found a clean copy, an ancient 2002 app wasn’t truly compatible with Windows 10 64-bit—it would crash, glitch, or refuse to recognize modern file formats.
That night, Arjun learned a hard lesson. The installer wasn’t Photoshop. It was a bundle of adware, browser hijackers, and a sneaky cryptominer that would soon make his fan roar like a jet engine. But excitement overpowered caution
The page was cluttered with neon green download buttons, each screaming “FREE!” in bold caps. Arjun squinted, scrolled past three fake “Start Download” ads, and finally found the real link. A file named Photoshop_7.0_Free.exe began downloading—just 2.8 MB.
One rainy evening, desperate to edit a portrait for his sister’s birthday, he typed into Google: “Adobe Photoshop 7.0 free download for Windows 10 64-bit Softonic.” No Photoshop icon
In the end, Arjun swallowed his nostalgia and downloaded GIMP—a free, open-source editor. It wasn’t the same, but it worked. And his computer stayed quiet.