Photoshop to use graphics chip at last
More CS4 details revealed
THE NEW VERSION of Photoshop will recruit the computer's graphics chip for the first time.
John Nack, principal product manager for Adobe Photoshop said CS4 will use the graphics processing unit, or GPU.
This will mean that it will be better able to zoom in and out or rotate the canvas so that artists can reorient an image for the best sketching angle, display and manipulate 3D objects, and handle colour correction.
Nack said that GPU power advancement meant that there was an enormous wealth of cycles Photoshop could take advantage of.
While graphics chips are designed to blast pixels to the screen, they are not really designed to shove everything back to the main processor for further work.
This means that photoshop will not be able to accelerate all processes. It also means that Adobe has to work more carefully on hardware compatibility.
Later a GPU-enabled feature called Pixel Bender, which lets people apply special effects quickly, will be added into CS4 as a free update.
Upgrade prices are $199 for the Photoshop CS4 and $349 for CS4 Extended. CS4 extended is more for scientific applications, dealing with medical imagery and creating 3D objects.
Photoshop Elements will hit the shops for about $100 and its online Photoshop Express for free.
It will be on the shelves in October.
L'Inq
News.com
Comments
finally
just to get an idea on how retarded these guys are... Microsoft already uses the GPU for the Vista GUI, so how come they took so long to bring it on board?Physics takes over
I think Adobe already uses OpenGL, DD, etc. for rendering. This is more likely some form of phyics based system passed to the GPU for blasing quick calculations when applying effects and filters at pixel levels. I've tried to find out more info, but no one quite knows what's going on. Adobe's moving more and more cross platform, so I suspect the implimentation to be very rough at the momentApple and GPU acceleration
Apple had GPU acceleration back in August 2002 in OS 10.2 using Quartz Extreme to accelerate the user interface.finally
micky mouse vista real does? wow, i had no idea they even knew what a gpu was.It's different...
Vista is using the GPU for showing (and probably generating) the GUI... and that's the whole idea behind the graphic card usage.What’s new about Photoshop and other software using GFX is that they will use the graphic card to do some calculations on (lets call them) "big numbers" - and that’s something different than displaying pictures...
Now if only...
we could get them to commit to bringing GPU processing support to Premier Pro. That would be better than excellent. Would probably see render times drop by a factor of 4 or greater.Oh, and I would love to know what GPU's are supported under this, namely any of the AMD cards, consumer or professional.
RE: Finally
I havn't looked into it, but my guess is that Adobe need some sort of API or interface to use the graphics card for this kind of GPGPU task. Microsoft can do these things because they write the OS, Adobe doesn't.I assume that for some reason now the tools and API's to do GPGPU computing have advanced to such a stage where incorporating such a feature is actually worthwhile.
to the last comment
"just to get an idea on how retarded these guys are... Microsoft already uses the GPU for the Vista GUI, so how come they took so long to bring it on board?"perhaps the answer is right here in the article?
"While graphics chips are designed to blast pixels to the screen, they are not really designed to shove everything back to the main processor for further work. "
So, correct me if i'm wrong but, wouldn't this mean the Vista GUI is not the same as a photo editing program; that is, GUI rendering does not have to process filters and such?
Perhaps then the photoshop developers aren't so retarded after all?
What will be...
the minimum graphics card you'll need for this feature?Adobe could be using CUDA or AMD Stream
I'm sure Adobe could be using CUDA or Stream API. However from an ARS technica newsclip commented that Adobe uses OpenGL instead. Further there is no 64bit support on the mac but for the pc side there is.Just as I suspect
The capability that we've always been promised, but have been paying for for years, comes in the year 2012.No 64-Bit for OSuX
How sad...Mayan 2012
Doesn't the Mayan calendar end in December 2012 [://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm] ? (Vic) What is it about 2012 with gpgpu is or do we find UFOs in 2012?