May 27th, 2008
Don't go buying high-end graphics cards to power the next-gen Photoshop
Last week the web was a-buzzing with rumors that the next incarnation of Photoshop (Photoshop CS4 as many are calling it … but I’ll call it CS.next even though Adobe has publicly called the next version CS4) would leverage graphics processing units in order to make the app faster. However, it looks like these rumors amounted to little more than wishful thinking.
Here’s what John Nack, Senior Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop, has to say:
It seems that news of the demo I did the other day (a repeat of what we’d shown publicly three weeks earlier) is bouncing all around the online tech press. People are excited that the Photoshop team is exploring ways to make the app feel faster and smoother, and that’s all good. What’s irritating, though, is just how much bogus info is getting invented, passed around, and swallowed without question.
…
Doesn’t matter, though: Someone pulled a date apparently out of thin air, and now everyone who can copy & paste is dutifully repeating it. The fish story grows with the telling, too. In addition to repeating the date, Electronista is inventing new details (e.g. “CS3 has already had limited support for graphics processing units (GPUs) for certain filters”; sorry, no; “An upcoming wave of video cards with special physics processing will also help, Adobe explains”; nope, didn’t say that; and more). Where do people get this stuff? It’s particularly annoying to see made-up info presented as a response from Adobe–to questions that were never asked. (Contacting Adobe PR, or me directly, to confirm some detail isn’t exactly tough.)
This rumor never made much sense to me in the first place. Sure, a Photoshop that leveraged the GPU would be cool, but there are plenty of other things that Adobe can do to improve Photoshop, for example, make it 64-bit - as a daily Ps CS3 user I know I’d appreciate that!
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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| 05/27/08
