Adobe Adds GPU Acceleration To Creative Suite 4 246
arcticstoat writes "GPU computing has just taken a major step into the world of mainstream software development, as Adobe has now released a GPU-accelerated version of its Creative Suite, comprising Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro. Both Premiere Pro and After Effects only support GPU features on Nvidia's professional range of Quadro GPUs, but Photoshop CS4 allows GPU acceleration on any mainstream GPU that supports Shader Model 3.0 (such as Nvidia's GeForce 6200 series of GPUs). Built on OpenGL, Photoshop CS4's GPU features allow real-time rotation of images and accelerated zooming and panning. As well as this, Photoshop CS4 also uses the GPU for anti-aliasing on text and objects, and it can tap the GPU for brushstroke previews, HDR tone mapping and colour conversion."
It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make use (Score:4, Interesting)
It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac pro to make use of it as the mini has a very weak video card and the imac screens are not good for photo work.
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they use glossy screens and apple does not let you (Score:2)
they use glossy screens and apple does not let you pick if you want one or not like they do with the mac pro.
Re:they use glossy screens and apple does not let (Score:5, Informative)
they use glossy screens and apple does not let you pick if you want one or not like they do with the mac pro.
Screen finish has nothing to do with the screen panel.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:4, Informative)
The higher end iMacs, the Mac Pros, and the MacBook Pros all have real graphic cards.
In fact, at this point, the low end iMacs may have real graphics cards (not those Intel chips).
That said, it's being used for things like zooming around the image smoothly and color correction. Even the little Intel chips should be able to handle that with pretty big images without problems. The higher end things the GPUs can be used for (I hear some of the new 3D features) would probably need a better GPU.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Interesting)
The higher end iMacs, the Mac Pros, and the MacBook Pros all have real graphic cards.
But do they have real SCREENS?
I mean a proper 8-bit color space, instead of 6-bit dithering? I mean the ability choose matt vs glossy.
Obviously the Mac Pro lets you attach whatever you want to it, but the imacs and macbook pros stick you with the choice of exactly the one LCD screen apple chooses. (although the mbp used to let you choose between matte and glossy; i don't know if it still does; but that's just the finish not the technology.)
As far as i know, all Apple laptops use 6-bit TN screens. And there is a fair bit of information out there that iMacs have switched to 6-bit TN screens too, at least for 20" models. The 24" model is apparently an 8-bit S-IPS... but its not like apple makes this info readily available and the specs are subject to change, so you've got to pay constant attention.
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although the mbp used to let you choose between matte and glossy; i don't know if it still does; but that's just the finish not the technology.)
You still get the choice.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as i know, all Apple laptops use 6-bit TN screens.
The fun thing is Apple fanboys, when challenge, ignore/contest the quality reduction of using a 6-bit panel.
I'm not a Mac fan, and yet I'm kind of irritated by the cheap LCDs. The whole thing with Apple is they market their computers as high-end pretty multimedia workstations, to justify the high prices. If they're going to throw cheap-ass 6-bit panels in there, how can anyone take them seriously ?
There's not much in the way of "perceived value" when dealing with computers. You either have good hardware, or you don't. In an age where the difference between a cheap LCD and a very good one means a 20-25% premium, Apple's being absolutely moronic to go with the cheap stuff. At the OEM level it's maybe $50 more per unit, which is NEGLIGIBLE considering Apple's reputation is built on graphics.
Idiots, amazingly smug idiots.
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The 20" iMac has the cheaper LCD, the 24" is a higher quality panel. You still can't choose a matte screen though.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:4, Interesting)
The fun thing is Apple fanboys, when challenge, ignore/contest the quality reduction of using a 6-bit panel.
While I don't consider myself a fanboy, I do love my MacBook. That said, I agree with you completely, and absolutely hate the cool-temp TN in this thing. It really takes away from what is otherwise a great machine. I understand Apple's obsession with product differentiation, but come on -- is there really such a need for them to use such cheap-ass parts? Is it all their name that sells the computers still?
As I said, I love this MacBook but I would be over-the-top about it if it had a quality screen and even a mediocre graphics chipset.
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You can get a better screen and a better graphics card. It's called MacBook Pro. You get what you pay for.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:4, Interesting)
even the pro models have crappy TN panels.
This is ubiquitous though, and the bits per pixel are scarcely if at all documented.
This means it's pretty improbable that anyone will come eat their lunch any time soon, leaving them "safe" to do it, not that I don't despise them for it.
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Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Informative)
The sort of glossy high-saturation screens used for iMacs looks great to a lot of users, but isn't good for professional-level color matching. Some people refuse to use LCDs at all because the black point isn't true enough.
Basic idea here is that the sort of screen you want when choosing colors for print ads isn't the same as the screen you want for general consumer use. It's kind of like how the sort of speakers you want in a professional studio aren't the same as what you want for your home stereo. (whether that analogy makes things clearer or more obscure, I don't know)
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hrmm... i've never heard of this. aside from contrast ratio and luminance what other monitor specs would have an impact on professional design work? shouldn't saturation be adjustable via software? a high-saturation monitor can always be set to display with a lower saturation level, but a lower saturation monitor can't be set to display higher saturation than it's capable of producing.
it seems to me that for color-matching the only thing you should be concerned about is choosing the right color profile in y
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Hey! I have a pair of 4408A studio monitor speakers attached to my living room stereo, you insensitive clod! ;)
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yeah, my main 'hifi' is based on a studio monitor setup as well. i would never go back :)
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that for less than half that sum you can get a PC with an up-to-date graphics card that will also easily run the Adobe Suite?
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Insightful)
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No. In most cases you would be correct (Macbook, iMac, Macbook Pro), but the Mac Pro uses memory that is expensive no matter where you get it from. It's pretty much the one case where it's better to just buy the ram upgrades along with the machine.
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$100 for 4GB. [ramseeker.com] Seems to compare favorably with other types of RAM.
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Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Funny)
But if you want to buy the full version of Creative Suite that includes Premier and everything, you're paying $2500.
Since when does anyone *buy* Adobe Creative Suite?
I'm joking, of course. Sort of.
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Just about everyone who uses it professionally. In the great scheme of things, $2500 is not a large business expense. If you can't afford that, software costs are hardly your biggest business worry.
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Everybody bitches and moans about the fact that Office costs $400 but somehow nobody minds getting completely raped by the Adobe monopoly.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because Adobe's software works really well. Seriously. Yes, it's being raped, but it's the difference between raped by a professional dominatrix (Adobe) and a prison-yard gangbanger (Microsoft).
Well, there you have it. I've reduced the professional software market to a comparison between bondage and prison rape.
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Damn and I just blew through 15 mod points the other day.
Though they haven't really improved Photoshop in like a decade. OK maybe slight exaggeration. And let me make no bones about it, I'm still really pissed Macromedia sold out to them. Life was much better with both Adobe & Macromedia in it.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Funny)
And you got modded Insightful.
That's the funniest part.
Because it's so true.
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Since when does anyone *buy* Adobe Creative Suite?
I'm joking, of course. Sort of.
No, no, NO! You must say "According to a friend of a friend". Legally that will get you out of any legal trouble... well, according to a friend of a friend.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Interesting)
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Then you need a efix to run mac os on it or osx86 (Score:2)
Then you need a efix to run mac os on it or use the os x86 hacks.
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Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Interesting)
This is entirely the fault of Apple. Apple was touting Carbon as a viable solution until last year. Moving a huge app like PPro or Photoshop to Cocoa will take a lot of time. If Apple hadn't told everybody that Carbon was a viable platform for 64 bits Adobe would have started switching a long time ago.
Obviously Apple encouraged everybody to go Cocoa, but for Adobe and most other large apps that would have been an absurd choice. If Carbon was viable, why would they port to Cocoa at the expense of fixing application bugs and adding real features? Moving from Carbon to Cocoa would not give Adobe any new features but the cost would be significant. Staying with Carbon was the only sane solution no matter what the zealots claim.
Apple screwed everybody on that one. Not an unusual move for Apple really...
Now, many Apple fan-boys and dummies will state that Adobe should have moved a long time ago. It was the way of the future (despite Apple stating Carbon was too). Every sensible company should move to Cocoa according to these zealots. Problem is, not even Apple has done that. Final Cut Pro is a Carbon app and will need a significant re-write if it wants to go 64 bit. Perhaps the FCP team also believed Steve when he BS'ed about Carbon also being the future.
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Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Informative)
Apple never said Carbon was the future. Carbon was always a compatibility fudge so that it was easier for OS9 apps to run on OSX, and to make porting apps to the new OS easier. Cocoa was always the way forward, it's just that Adobe never bothered to switch.
I'm not a Mac fanboy, I just use one at work.
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Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Interesting)
In fairness, the problem isn't really that the Mac Pros are overly-expensive for the hardware. I mean, we could quibble about whether they're well-priced for what you get, but at least they're in the right neighborhood.
The problem here is that Apple doesn't offer a normal mid-range machine. There's the Mac mini, which isn't very powerful and isn't expandable, and then you have the Mac Pro, which is a serious professional level workstation. The only thing in between is their all-in-one machine, which isn't suitable for everyone (including serious professional designers).
I'm not sure why Apple has gone so long without selling a middle-of-the-road headless tower in the $1k-$2k range. I think it would help them get more enterprise penetration.
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We had some Apple reps at our company last month, pitching their security stuff (File Vault). When they asked for questions, just about everyone said they wanted a mini-tower in the $1200-$1800 range with minimum 3 pci-e slots and graphic card options. We have a lot of engineers who don't need an 8 core machine with 16GB RAM (and a $3000+ price tag). If they do come out with such a beast, we'll be picking up a metric butt load of 'em.
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How little do you pay your engineers that the price difference between a $3000 machine and an $1800 machine is even noticeable compared to their salaries and benefits? How little do you pay them that the difference between a $2300 4-core Mac Pro and a $1800 mini-tower is noticeable?
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the engineer's pay but their project funding. A lot of them would rather save $10k or $20k on new Macs for their department and spend it on other equipment or for time on some of our super computers. Part of their funding comes from gov't programs and customers and other part comes from selling their work to businesses, state gov'ts and NGO's. Sure, some orgs are flush and buy top line gear. Others are told they have a $2K cap on personal computing gear.
As for me paying them, heh, I'm just a contract tech monkey who gets to unpack and set up kit.
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That "you" was the plural you, meaning your organization. I didn't mean to imply that you paid them personally.
A friend tells a classic story of consulting. He shows up for a job, getting paid $BIGNUM/hour writing software. They sit him down in front of the crappiest computer you could imagine and tell him to go to work.
The thing takes so long to build the project that he finds himself spending more time by the coffee machine than in front of the computer. Meanwhile the manager has a shiny new multi-kilobuc
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Maybe some people just have a problem wasting money?
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It's not coincidence that Apple don't sell a machine which is directly comparable to mainstream Windows PCs. Every one of their desktop machines is "different" to the mainstream. The extremely-high-end Pro; the tiny Mini; the sleek, integrated iMac. Not being directly comparable makes it easier to sell at a higher price than machines wit
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:4, Informative)
The extremely-high-end Pro
Dell XPS [dell.com]
the tiny Mini
Dell Studio Hybrid [dell.com]
Asus EeeBox [asus.com]
the sleek, integrated iMac.
Dell XPS One [dell.com]
HP Touchsmart [hp.com]
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I find the XPS one to be ugly
Hey! You're on Slashdot, not Engadget! We don't care if a computer is fugly or not if it can perform well. :)
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I'm not sure why Apple has gone so long without selling a middle-of-the-road headless tower in the $1k-$2k range.
Because people keep giving them $3000 for $800 worth of parts.
If you could use commodity hardware, you could buy that midrange machine for $700.
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Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, my e-penis is much larger than yours. ;)
I have 7 buttons, a scroll ball and 2000 DPI at 1000 Hz on my mouse.
And I actually know how to put it to use.
The Mighty Mouse might look good... like 80s white-plastic-sci-fi.
But in every other aspect it is as bad of a joke as 6-bit-LCDs.
Ergonomics, precision, functionality... you name it...
Apple is not selling a product. It's selling a dream.
I'm sorry, but my fantasy exceeds that dream by far, and I'm not susceptible to professional lying like in religion, hypnosis, politics, marketing, etc.
Luckily for Apple, I'm a rather rare kind of person on this planet.
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Cars? Eeewww. Don't tell me you still live in the 20th century where you actually need cars. Pervert!
We ride on flying hot women with internet access and fuckstick-2.0-port. (I bet you're still on 1.0.)
You can't even *imagine* the number of... ehrm... "buttons" they have. O:-)
Don't try to win against me in fantasizing. You don't stand a chance! :D
On a serious note: Included? PCs in a whole? I haven't seen someone buying a PC as a whole for a looong time. Especially not including a keyboard and a mouse. On t
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 mac to make (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe Apple will bring back the CUBE. Heck just take the mini and put an PCI-E slot on it so you can a better video card on it.
Would help gamers and other that don't want (to pay for) a Pro.
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Wait for a dual-core VIA Nano? The single-core version is likely similar to an Athlon 64 just at lower speeds...
Already the CN896 has PCIEx16 support. nVidia wants to get PCIEx16 as a popular option for VIA boards, hoping to have at least one last niche in case it needs money. (right now nvidia is getting abused by everyone, it's very likely they'd launch extremely-low-power cards and market them with miniITX to dig into a different market)
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If you can afford to buy CS4, you should be able to justify upgrading/replacing your computer.
Re:It's too bad that you need a $2300 macPC'S ONLY (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the 64-bit Photoshop CS4 currently only runs on PC's. The Mac version remains at 32-bit for now.
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iMac screens are not good for photo work? Someone should have told me! BS.
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I wouldn't gripe about the mini (you get what you pay for), but I agree that the glossy-screen-or-else option is really annoying. It seems like everybody has forgotten the original reason why glossy screens were bad for computer work (eye strain, and useless when you're trying to judge an image and confusing details with glare). :P
Yeah but... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is a cool innovation (and quite frankly overdue for graphics manipulation packages) but people don't seem to be too happy with the way Adobe has been handling bug fixes to CS3, which was already expensive enough. Now comes another $$$ upgrade.
There's an interesting list of popular gripes here [dearadobe.com], which mostly seem to center around "you didn't fix CS3 to begin with" and "it's too expensive".
I don't mind companies charge for software at all, and if you need Photoshop or any of the other apps then there's really no question about paying for them (need here == paying the bills). But CS4 seems to be just a bit too expensive for most people. I don't use Adobe apps, but I know many people in the publishing industry who do and tend to have a weird love-hate relationship with them.
Indesign ignored? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with you that this is overdue for Photoshop. Pushing some of the workload over to the GPU is a great idea.
I also agree that the upgrades are too expensive and that irritating bugs have not been fixed.
But I also wonder where Indesign fits into this. I can imagine several ways Indesign would function better using the GPU -- no more grainy photo previews, smooth zooming in and out (a la Google Earth?) but I don't want eye candy at the expense of functionality. And I want them to fix things that are mind-blowingly irritating, like importing text files. It chokes on UTF-8 files and anything with even a hint of Unicode punctuation. It's incredibly frustrating and there's no way to add filters for importing that I can find.
I think Indesign's text importing is actually worse now (CS3) than it was when it first came out. Don't neglect stuff like this in favour of the "shiny" factor, Adobe.
Too Expensive - Especially 'abroad' (Score:5, Informative)
Of course it's too expensive - it's what people will pay for it, and it's what people will pay for it because it's the defacto standard and they have no proper choice.
Yes, yes, I know.. you can use The Gimp! Or Paint Shop Pro! And while many home users most certainly could - no, they do not give a rats' ass about CMYK separation - they also hear that it is -the- choice among professionals.. and will thus go for it anyway. And professionals don't really need Photoshop most of the time either. What CG shop uses CMYK? What web developer uses the Panorama stitching function? Come on, give me a few anecdotal cases, and I'll show you thousands that make drop-shadows for buttons.
Until something or somebody can break through that defacto standard stuff, Photoshop (as buggy, archaic, and overpriced as it is) will remain the #1 choice... and will remain as expensive as it is.
In fact, things got more expensive... Compared to April 2008 for the same CS3 products ('same' in name, not in featureset, I suppose).
CS4 Design Standard: $1399 vs $1199
CS4 Web Premium: $1699 vs $1599
Contribute CS4: $199 vs $169
Photoshop CS4: $699 vs $649
But if you think that's bad, be glad you - at least, if you're in North America/United States - don't have to pay the "You love us so much, we'll let you to pay extra!"-charge. This is for the NL store as of September 22, exchange rate USD / EUR: 0.677620 (xe.net, indicative only), all prices excluding VAT (BTW) sourced from Adobe online store, all prices calculated back to dollars.
PRODUCT / USD US / USD NL
CS4 Design Standard / $1399 / $1873
CS4 Design Premium / $1799 / $2950
CS4 Web Standard / $999 / $1474
CS4 Web Premium / $1699 / $2507
CS4 Production Premium / $1699 / $2802
CS4 Master Collection / $2499 / $4131
After Effects CS4 / $999 / $1622
Contribute CS4 / $199 / $294
DreamWeaver CS4 / $399 / $663
Fireworks CS4 / $299 / $441
Flash CS4 / $699 / $1032
Illustrator CS4 / $599 / $958
InCopy CS4 / $249 / $367
InDesign CS4 / $699 / $1105
Photoshop CS4 / $699 / $1017
Photoshop CS4 Extended / $999 / $1578
Premiere Pro CS4 / $799 / $1253
Soundbooth CS4 / $199 / $294
On average, that's a price increase that seems to have no good reason* of 53.76% on average, with DreamWeaver CS4 taking the crown at 66% and CS4 Design Standard as the least increase at 34%.
* I should qualify the 'no good reason' bit, as otherwise there will be a slew of responses on why there's a price increase.. localization, local support, bla-dee-bla. Thankfully, I don't have to qualify it myself - another person made an excellent set of pages on this matter, and I suggest those who feel like posting such reasons first read them:
http://www.amanwithapencil.com/adobe.html [amanwithapencil.com] - Adobe is ripping off European (and other non-US) customers
It deals with the most common 'reasons' and debunks them. I'll add one - most of the products do not have native Dutch versions and those that do are hardly sold. It's slightly dated (being for the CS3 launch), but the same things still apply. It also gives one very true answer that the author dug up from an interview, and serves as the basis for my earlier "You love us so much" statement:
I don't have anything against Adobe, or their products**, but I most certainly do take issue with their pricing in the various markets. Oh, and I also take
Hacked Drivers (Score:2)
How long before someone releases hacked drivers to use the accelerations on desktop-class cards? A simple BIOS flash ought to do the trick as well.
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or a hard-mod.
but the best bet is to use RivaTuner as described here [sidefx.com].
But how CS4 does its detection is another thing.
Normally, (at least for games) D3D caps detection is used instead of using device ID's and such.
But if they are only supporting nvidia pro stuff, it might be device id based.
One major speedup's done, how about the other? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:One major speedup's done, how about the other? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Quadro graphics board will give you a much faster speedup for most people than the 64 bit native photoshop would.
There's only a few fringe cases (people that do outdoor advertising images maybe that need to edit images larger than 4GB in uncompressed size) where the 64 bit processing is really needed.
Re:One major speedup's done, how about BILLBOARDS (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this is a common misconception that large display sizes require large images. Get up close to a billboard (which is designed to be viewed from a minimum of 30 to 50 feet away, and usually much further) and you'll find that instead of pixels per inch, that it is measured in inches per pixel, and some pixels are the size of your fist. You don't need 64-bit addressing to make very attractive billboards, or may other large outdoor signs.
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But what about 64-bit users that have Quadro cards?
Re:One major speedup's done, how about the other? (Score:4, Informative)
Access to memory >4GB isn't the only benefit of going 64-bit on Intel/AMD architecture: Compiling for 'amd64' rather than 'i386' gives your code access to a lot more CPU registers among other things. That alone makes most operations significantly faster. So far the only application I've seen that doesn't significantly benefit from a 64-bit compilation is POV-Ray, and I've tried a lot.
Re:One major speedup's done, how about the other? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's going to depend whether or not the user needs 64 bit for their work. The lack of 64 bit isn't going to be a hold-up for me if I decide to get it. It seems like the people that would benefit are those doing the gigapixel project.
I've heard that companies often buy every other release anyway, so missing CS4 isn't going to be a big deal, unless the CS4 version offers enough productivity enhancements to pay for the upgrade. That too depends on how the person uses the program.
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"I think it's going to depend whether or not the user needs 64 bit for their work."
Right. And as of today every single last graphic profesional was able to get their work done on a 32 bit Photoshop. Are there many jobs that you had to refuse in the past?
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It is all Adobe's fault. They used some legacy APIs long after they should have - of course Apple would phase those APIs out eventually.
The purpose of legacy APIs is to give you time to rewrite your code before it stops working, not to put your head in the sand and say 'it's working now'.
Next step: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Isn't Quadro Just Another Name (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't Quadro just a different identifier in the GPU bios and people have been turning their consumer level cards into Quadros with a bios update? The only "magic" about Quadro cards (aside from their insanely high prices) is that the Quadro driver won't run when it detects a consumer card id. To limit this to "Quadro" cards is Adobe, and most especially Nvidia, ripping off the average consumer.
Re:Isn't Quadro Just Another Name (Score:4, Interesting)
In short: No
In long: go Google
In intermediate:
There's more than just the identification string, there's also firmware and sometimes there are actually different chipsets. Suffice to say that just tricking the O/S and software into believing your GeForce is a Quadro does -not-, in fact, make it a Quadro.
That said - I can't think of any good reason that Adobe would limit this to Quadro cards other than for the support factor; they can easily get support from NVidia for their purposes when dealing with Quadro cards.. for consumer cards, where said consumers will install any little driver hack in order to get more FPS in some game.. well, the case just isn't as simple.
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The difference between the Geforce and Quadro lines is mainly the drivers: they're tweaked for different applications. Geforce drivers will sacrifice some display quality and precision for speed, which the Quadro driver will not, because a professional won't care as much about speed as he will about accuracy.
How come it took this long? (Score:2, Interesting)
If CS3 ran flawlessly under wine.... (Score:2, Interesting)
...installation and all...then the year of the Linux desktop would be here, for sure.
I can't believe why that isn't the almost singular purpose of that project. It would make a huge difference since PS has no real alternative on Linux. At least one almost similar the to what users are used to. All other business applications, like word and others, has corresponding.
Yeah, sure, maybe there aren't many CAD applications either, but engineers aren't the ones that need the super-easy transitions. And CAD-users a
I'd settle for it not behaving like a virus... (Score:3, Interesting)
...and getting rid of the DRM that thinks it has the right to mess with my boot sector. That alone has made buying CS3 a show-stopper for me, even though I run on Windows and I would very much like to have several of the applications. For anyone who dual-boots Windows and Linux, it's pretty much fatal to even installing CS3 on the Windows persona even if you don't have moral objections to supporting DRM-laden software. Does anyone know whether Adobe have seen the light and removed this for CS4?
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Sorry... I couldn't resist. That post made almost no sense and there's always one post like that in every thread.
VMWare (Score:3, Interesting)
How well (if at all) will this work in VMWare?
Slashvertisement... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thing reads like an ad for nvidia GPUs, which doesn't come across as a huge surprise when all the quotes are from an nvidia PR rep.
FWIW, as far as I can tell there's no reason why the Photoshop enhancements won't work on an SM3-capable AMD GPU like the X1000-series and up. Might even work on SM3 capable intel graphics, if such a beast exists.
Nice to see them using OpenGL (Score:3, Informative)
From the article:
"even though it's standard OpenGL, we didn't care - we still wanted to do it because we felt like it would bring a better experience to the end user... we believe that you should get a better experience and we're going to devote engineering resources to make that happen, even if it helps the competition."
If this isn't just BS, then kudos to nVidia. Not that I actually use PS. I use the GIMP, and am eagerly awaiting 2.6 with GEGL. I'm told 2.5 builds now have multithreaded support which will be great for those heavy filters. I'd like to see an OpenGL frontend like this one for the GIMP some day.
Adobe's ramping up the 3D (Score:3, Informative)
At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the Adobe Reader was leveraging the GPU in its next release.
Re:Adobe's ramping up the 3D (Score:4, Informative)
Surprise! GPU acceleration is already in version 8.x [adobe.com]
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Re:GPU? *cough* (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 3.1 could use hardware acceleration to move a rectangular section of video memory to another part of video memory.
A modern 3D card can apply a program in parallel to every pixel on screen, resize, rotate, and apply arbitrary filters with minimal CPU load.
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Well, consumers didn't have 2D/3D cards until the mid 90s. And even today, a lot of computers come with crappy integrated graphics that probably wouldn't help much. I think if it was as easy as putting "some hooks in their code to use some maths[sic] functions" then there would have been Photoshop competitors who used this advantage for market share. But that seems to not have been the case, at least not successfully.
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Oops! How amero-centric of me, I didn't know that.
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I have an old NuBus card in my Quadra 650 that has special AT&T DSP chips on it, made just for Photoshop acceleration (mostly Blur, I think). I think it was SuperMac or RAdius. Been a long time since I cracked case on that machine.
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I think that's just an extra feature they added because they were already using OpenGL though. The graphical effects are more important. Adding zooming and panning for older cards would require writing a completely new renderer to deal with it. And since you can get a shader model 3.0 compatible card for a fraction of the cost of Photoshop, it's safe to assume that anyone who feels they need this functionality will buy a new graphics card as well.
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