Comments on: Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe’s 64-bit roadmap

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:47:15 +0000

Is it just better to wait for Adobe CS6 to come out? I have CS3, but from what I've read/heard, CS5 doesn't seem to be ready for prime time. It seems to be a transitional version. [How so? --J.] The Mac OS versions are mostly 32 bit. Maybe by version CS6, everything will be 64 bit, and written in cocoa? Is that a correct assumption? [Why do you care if it's written in Cocoa? Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects CS5 are all written in Cocoa. The only difference you'll notice is that this enables them to run in 64-bit mode. Otherwise, from a user's point of view, Cocoa is irrelevant. --J.] Anyone care to comment?

By: melgross

melgross — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:49:02 +0000

John, I’ve got a question for you, assuming you’re still reading this of course.
I’ve been using PS since version 1. I know it as well as anyone I suppose, as I’ve used it at times for 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. Now, my daughter is a photo major at the University of The Arts, London. She’s been using PS since she was 10. Considering her age, now 18, she knows it better than many professionals.
But her school is saying they should get Lightroom. I can’t contact them to find out if this is just due to cost. I always upgrade to the latest Design Premium Suite, and will do so again in late May. She always gets copies on her 24″ iMac, and now, her 15″ MBP, as we can use three computers as per license, and she isn’t selling work.
Other than price, and the GUI of the program, since she’s so used to PS, Bridge, etc. (and Illustrator and InDesign), is there a reason you can think of for me to also get her Lightroom? Any particular reason why her school might say that?

By: Joseph Sims

Joseph Sims — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:35:25 +0000

It’s funny, perusing this, and then looking at current events… e.g. No Flash compiler on iPad, and all the hoopla behind that, is funny.
Especially because here, we see Apple clearly moving away from easier cross-platform software development.
This couldn’t have been a surprise.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:02:10 +0000

I know this sounds crazy, but Adobe, please, double your prices and keep the PS LE, a very limited version of PS. We pros are getting killed by wanna be photographers who are creating PS images, rather then high quality photography. The easier it is for amateurs to create photos, the more our craft will be damaged.

By: Migue

Migue — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:31:22 +0000

Why not qt (cross platafform) libraries??

By: Kenyon

Kenyon — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:08:15 +0000

Wow. A whole lot of passion here. Good stuff. Mine is a simple question that I’m sure is benieth some on this board. I have recently built a new i7 Intel based machine. I am installing Windows 7 64 bit on it with 6GB of RAM. I have CS4 installed on my older machine. Do we know of a projected release date of CS5? I am wondering if I should wait for it or go ahead and get another copy of CS4. A few months on the old machine is fine if it means a clean install of the newer product.
Happy hollidays to all!
Kenyon

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:00:34 +0000

The issue of Adobe’s continued refusal to supply a 64 bit Mac version of their products begins to pale by comparison to the utter breakdown of customer service at Adobe. It would be entirely disingenuous for anyone to defend the outsourcing of Adobe’s once proud support team.
Remember when it was a pleasure to contact Adobe??? Now all you get is a barely articulate individual who is nearly completely incompetent sitting in Indonesia, making five bucks a day to ruin Adobe as a brand.
I have not been able to use any of the programs in my Adobe Master Collection since the installation of Snow Leopard!When I did get through to what Adobe dares to cakk “customer service” (after hours on hold) I spoke with individuals who could barely speak English and who definitely knew nothing of the products they now tarnish.
Who let this happen? Adobe was once one of the best companies in the world and now it is all in the latrine caused cost cutting outsourcing which has now all but killed this brand. What a pity.

By: Paul Bickley

Paul Bickley — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:06:44 +0000

So, I just bought nice computer, a hp and dual processor…ect. and all I want to know is when are you going to come out with cs5 especailly made for windows 7…

By: Chris Cox

Chris Cox — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:56:05 +0000

Read the pages you linked more closely, please.
Photoshop != After Effects.

By: Steven May

Steven May — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:29:44 +0000

I said previously: “One last recollection: I recall Adobe advertising on their home page that Photoshop was, at the time, MUCH more optimized for the Windows platform than the Mac platform. Though it may have been true (maybe it still is), that was a very hostile statement to make on the part of Adobe.”
You replied: Adobe never made such a statement. Ever… …Otherwise, I’m sorry to say that you’re inventing something out of whole cloth, and being unable to furnish evidence to the contrary, I’d appreciate it if you’d retract your assertion. (Sorry, but having been a Mac user for 25 years and an Adobe employee for 9, I’m very sensitive to the cult of perpetual victimhood that still clings to the Mac community.) –J.
Though the Adobe page has long since been replaced, per your request, I was able to find a reference for you in print from 2003, PDF located here:
http://www.daguerreimaging.com/ftp/Jnack/AdobeSiteDingsApples.pdf.
Web article here:
http://news.cnet.com/Adobe-site-dings-Apples/2100-1045_3-994070.html?tag=mncol
Among other things, his article states:
“An Adobe Systems executive denied that the company is advocating
Windows PCs over Apple’s Macintosh, despite a new page on Adobe’s
Web site that claims PCs run Adobe software faster.”
I’m not a fan of perpetual victimhood either. I’m more a fan of calling it as it is. If Adobe wants to advertise better optimization on the Windows platform, so be it. No hard feelings here. But after the fact, don’t deny the statement…

By: Gordon

Gordon — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:44:03 +0000

Ok, I’m an idiot. All these years using Photoshop and I never realized you could change the color picker. Just goes to show how often I use the preferences. :-)
But my other point still stands. There is a lot of functionality hidden in Photoshop. Hopefully the next release will bring some of it to the fore with more overlays and dynamic panels.
[We're sure as heck gonna try! --J.]

By: flashscope components

flashscope components — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:15:58 +0000

yeah. 64-bit is something we should enjoy but question of where to use Cocoa and what OS to use? Windows not really working with 64-bit apps.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:50:57 +0000

“The code at issue, however, is Photoshop’s UI code. It may be surprising to non-coders (as it was to me when I got here), but UI code often constitutes a very large percentage of one’s overall code base. –J.”

Very good point, and very true! The libraries and core functionality tend to be very straightforward and because they have no visual interface easy to make cross platform. Relatively clean black boxes with clear inputs and outputs. But when you get into the UI you have to deal with all the quirks of the host OS and all the various drawing routines of the complicated view states. I can see how this is a majority bulk of the code base.
I would assume that that by moving to Cocoa you can actually simplify the UI a bit can you not? Perhaps less custom widgets and more standard OS X Aqua goodness and widgets used throughout the entire OS system. And it can make you adaptable to OS visual changes in the future by using standard widgets. And of course there is some potential for nice use of core animation and stuff like NSPanel. Innovation on that front would be nice to see. More overlays in the UI. More HUD panels. Show me the brush effects before and as I am using them. Visualize and animate my editing history so I can cognitively track what I am doing to the underlying image. My favorite UI element in photoshop has always been the “variations” panel because it is so obvious what is going on. I wish there was more of that in the interface. More modular and useful ways to preview the changes and effects one is making to the image. Another concept, let me hover over the layers and see them in isolation in a HUD. None of this clicking on eye balls tediously turning things on and off. Let me literally fly through the layer difference with my mouse and a flyout preview of the layers in isolation.
Often creative design is a visually iterative process so why not give designers more visually rich tools that display the discrete parts of the design so that they can better track what they are doing as a they do it. Designers are visual creatures so why not a really powerful and rich visual interface?
I would imagine the real problem for Adobe is how to find the balance between the old and the new. You change the UI too much and the old time users will revolt. Too little and it becomes stale and starts to feel crufty. I am hoping that Adobe takes the opportunity to be bold with the UI. You are rewriting new code anyway let your UI designers take some chances. Keep the old style around as a toggle-able mode for people who have a strict comfort zone. But be willing to really rethink some old concepts with layers and interface panels. Also, please, please, please provide the ability to integrate with and extend the native OS X color picker. One of the few things that pisses me off every time in photoshop. I don’t want to learn two different color swatch systems. Cross platform doesn’t mean having to be 100% consistent. There are different idioms in the different OSes. Respect and embrace that and you will have happier users. And the schizos bouncing between Windows and OS X are probably not your hardcore users anyway. It you want a mode that is 100% consistent between OS then make that an option that can be turned on in preferences. People invest a lot of energy into their favorite OS’s way doing things.
My two cents anyway. Kind of looking forward to what Adobe can accomplish with the Cocoa transition.

By: Steven May

Steven May — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:14:49 +0000

John, if you want to go simple, Cocoa is native, Carbon is not. I believe it is impossible to assert that, as a software engineer with any amount of industry experience, you believe that any manufacturer will support legacy code indefinately. No one does that. I do not knock Adobe for sticking to Carbon as long as they have-- I get the huge rewrite that Cocoa presents. And my sympathies are extended. Apple has pulled that rug out from under their developers too many times. And I do not blame those developers for having a lack of faith on Apple's ability to commit to one platform. But my mouth hits the floor when Adobe offers the idea that they were surprised that Carbon got dropped. [Carbon has not been dropped. Apple has made no statements whatsoever indicating that Carbon-based applications will no longer be supported at any point. Apple did, however, go back on what they had announced at WWDC 2006--namely, that they'd make 64-bit GUIs possible in Carbon and Cocoa. They said they were doing it, and then they reversed course. I guess we weren't supposed to be surprised that Apple didn't do what they said they'd do. --J.] My surprise is that Apple supported it this long. The prediction that Carbon's lifespan was severely limited has been on since day one. Common sense, I believe, to anyone paying attention. One last recollection: I do recall Adobe advertising on their home page that Photoshop was, at the time, MUCH more optimized for the Windows platform than the Mac platform. Though it may have been true (maybe it still is), that was a very hostile statement to make on the part of Adobe. [Adobe never made such a statement. Ever. Perhaps you're thinking of the former Illustrator product manager who, years ago (in the foreword to a book, as I recall), recommended using Windows. Otherwise, I'm sorry to say that you're inventing something out of whole cloth, and being unable to furnish evidence to the contrary, I'd appreciate it if you'd retract your assertion. (Sorry, but having been a Mac user for 25 years and an Adobe employee for 9, I'm very sensitive to the cult of perpetual victimhood that still clings to the Mac community.) --J.]

By: Twelve

Twelve — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:34:52 +0000

John, I for one appreciate the predicament that Adobe is in. Pretty much you can't win. As long as the new CS runs fine if I boot into the 64-bit kernel, I'll be pretty happy. However, you are dead wrong about only getting an 8% advantage when running a 64-bit application. [I'm not sure how I can be wrong about that when I was simply noting the relative performance difference we've observed when Photoshop CS4 in 32- vs. 64-bit mode. (That is, I wasn't speaking about/for all 64-bit apps.) I've written several times (e.g. here) about why PS doesn't just get a bunch faster in the presence of more registers. --J.] That is, unless you're talking about just doing a simple re-compile. Even when doing just the bare minimum in converting an application to 64-bit (like optimizing for 64-bit packing and alignment), all our applications are seeing 50-75% performance improvements for the computationally intense portions of the code. [That's great. Your results are much better than what Apple touts and what others are reporting. --J.] By moving to Cocoa and exploiting OpenCL and Grand Central heavily, we've seen astounding performance gains. As much as 370% for our target Core 2 Duo Mac/Intel platforms. [Cool, though of course we're not talking about OpenCL or GCD in this thread. --J.] Unfortunately the machines run much hotter than before (thanks to the heavy offload to the GPU), but the performance increase is quite striking. The biggest win seems to be the greater number of registers available for x64, but you need to reshuffle your code so that you better make use of the registers. I strongly suggest that you use the Intel compilers, separating the performance code out of the Cocoa framework and into a back-end service written in C++. After we finished our first major application conversion, one of our developers thought there was a bug because it simply wasn't possible for the job to have finished so quickly. In that case we saw a greater than 20x performance increase when testing on the same machine. Productivity slowed to a crawl that day as we stopped person after person in the hallway just to see the look on their faces and the inevitable "Oh, you must've done something wrong. No way is it that much faster." We do mostly internal applications, but the gains we've seen are great enough that we're upgrading every machine to a 64-bit capable one. Time is money.