advertisement

Ask CNET Asia

Find Products

  • Brand
  • Notebook type
  • Processor
  • Diagonal screen size
  • Weight w/battery
  • Dedicated GPU
  • Filter »

Price Guides

Buying Advice

Editors' Top 5s

CNET Features

 
 Print    Email     Bookmark     Share

Adobe uses graphics chip for faster Photoshop CS4



Now with 64-bit support

Another hardware change--for Windows users only--is support for 64-bit processors. Most folks won't notice much of a speedup--perhaps 10 percent in some cases--but performance is much better in some memory-intensive areas where the 4GB limit of 32-bit software is a problem.


Adobe's Creative Suite 4 comprises many sub-brands.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland, CNET News)
"For most people, with a 12-megapixel SLR file or doing Web design work, the difference they'll see is pretty negligible. The inflection point from 32-bit to 64-bit really happens where you would have run out of memory and would have had to go to your virtual memory system", storing data on the hard drive rather than in memory, Nack said. "There's a tenfold performance increase opening up a large file."

A companion product geared specifically for photographers, Photoshop Lightroom, has 64-bit support for both Mac and Windows, but Adobe couldn't do the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4 for Mac OS X because it was busy moving to a new underlying programming foundation from Apple, called Cocoa.

Photoshop, meet Macromedia

Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia gave the company access to the Flash technology for animation and scripting, and Photoshop CS4 now employs it in the plumbing. In the past, it was tough for third-party software developers to add new features to Photoshop, but built-in Flash 10 software means Photoshop will accommodate control panels from third parties.

"Now you can drop an SWF (Shockwave Flash file) into your Photoshop folder and extend the application," Nack said. "This is going to be a huge shot in the arm for people developing on top of the application."

Adobe plans to release a Configurator application to help people create their own panels, part of the company's effort to make a Photoshop that can be better tailored to specific tasks. That software currently is scheduled to arrive sometime around the end of October, Nack said.

One benefit of the Flash technology is that it's network-enabled. That permits integration, for example, with Adobe's Kuler site for creating harmonious color combinations, so palettes can be imported into Photoshop. Another possibility is a "geo" tab that can be added while browsing image information, showing where on a map a geotagged photo was taken.


Tags: GPU, Chip, Adobe Systems Inc., graphics chip, video
 

 
« Previous page | Other features »

    Talkback
There are currently no comments for this story.
To post comments, you need to become a member. It's FREE.
advertisement