GPU acceleration on CS4

GPU acceleration is one of the most significant trends in today hardware industry, opening the doors to an entirely new class of software. It appears Photoshop CS4 will be one of the first mainstream applications that will tap into the GPU for a speed up. We have been saying it for a while now, mainstream applications need GPU acceleration to ring in the next major evolutionary step in software development. Far too long we have been stuck in a cycle of programming that relies on increasing clock-speeds, brings acceleration with new CPUs and a slow-down with new software releases. Even if Photoshop supports multi-core CPUs, it is one of those applications that always are very time intensive to use and especially if you are a professional user and work with huge images, then you are very familiar with “The Great Wait”, which typically describes the time lost when opening a big file or when applying a filter.
But there appears to be a very effective solution on the horizon, a solution that is most likely more effective than anything else we have seen before and in our experience using Photoshop over the past 14 years. of Adobe’s "Creative Suite Next" (or CS4), code-named “Stonehenge”, which adds GPU and physics support to its existing multi-core support.
So, what can you do with general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) acceleration in Photoshop? Playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it will be like a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied almost instantly. Another impressive feature was the import of a 3D model into Photoshop, adding text and paint on a 3D surface and having that surface directly rendered with the 3D models' reflection map.
There was also a quick demo of a Photoshop 3D accelerated panorama, which is one of the most time-consuming tasks within Photoshop these days. The usability provided through the acceleration capabilities is enormous and we are sure that digital artists will appreciate the ability to work inside a spherical image and fix any artifacts on-the-fly.

Photoshop CS4

Photoshop CS4 is the 11th version of Adobe's venerable and industry-standard imaging application. It's hard to imagine that Adobe can continue to make large changes to Photoshop. It seems that just about everything but the kitchen sink is already in the application, but once again, Adobe has found ways to take a mature application and improve it. In this review, I'll give you a first look at the new features you'll find in Photoshop CS4.


Photoshop CS4 has changed the main work area and now supports tabbed documents . Here you can see the major changes to the UI. The main tool bar across the top of the window has changed with many of the most common tools, like selection, zoom, rotate, and views placed on the title bar for immediate access.

Photoshop CS4, along with Bridge CS4, is a solid upgrade to one of the most popular image editing programs. With a good mix of new features and improvements to old favorites, this is a worthwhile upgrade. If you skipped CS3, now is the time to move forward. In particular, the improved raw processing, and the new adjustment panel are a key part of my workflow when in Photoshop. Tighter integration with Lightroom 2.0 is a welcome addition, and the ability to perform better soft-proofing in the Print dialog is also helpful. It's still a big and complex program that probably does more than most of us will ever need. Only you can decide if Photoshop CS4 is the right option for you, but it's certainly not a program you'll ever outgrow!