When Adobe Photoshop CS4 comes out this October, it will feature GPU and Physics acceleration, as well as 64 bit processing.

This means Photoshop CS4 will not only be the first version of Photoshop to come in a 64 bit version, but also the first version to feature graphics and physics processor acceleration. This will make Photoshop CS4 faster than any previous versions, and it will let you manipulate 3D graphics. The physics acceleration might be able to generate particle and lighting effects dynamically and in 3D.

The GPU acceleration alone will increase the speed of Photoshop CS4 in certain tasks up to 100 times. At a recent Nvidia demo, “the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was 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.”

There is no word yet on whether CS4 will only take advantage of workstation GPU’s such as the Nvidia Quadro series. I am hoping that it will be able to use any GPU for an extra speed and power boost.

More information should be available as the October 1st release date approaches.

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