September 20, 2008

New Pixel Bender hotness

At Photoshop World I demonstrated Photoshop running a plug-in that houses Pixel Bender, Adobe’s new cross-platform, cross-application technology for running filters silly fast on GPUs & CPUs.  Because it also runs in the upcoming Flash Player 10 (due in conjunction with CS4) and in After Effects, I expect Pixel Bender to usher in a whole new era for Photoshop filters.  It radically lowers the barrier to entry (all you need is a text editor–which Adobe happens to provide)–and did I mention that it’s fast?

I’m seeing plenty of interesting examples popping up online.  To check them out you need to install the Flash Player 10 beta.

• Petri Leskinen is cranking out interesting experiments, including a crazy tunnel test. [Via Mike Chambers]
• Frank Reitberger has made cool fisheye and smudge (or what I’d call "The Chuck Close Effect") filters.

• Flash 3D expert Mr. Doob has posted a number of examples; I like rays in particular.
• Adobe’s Lee Brimelow has posted a pair of PB creation tutorials and an interactive sample, while Mike Chambers shows how to build ActionScript libraries of PB filters.
• More samples can be downloaded from the Adobe Exchange.

A couple of other notes:

• Kind of a technicality: Pixel Bender won’t be supported in the box in the next version of Photoshop, but we plan to offer a PB plug-in as a free download when CS4 ships.  Therefore it’s effectively part of the release.
• I expect the ability to run filter in the Flash Player to have a big impact on what Flash-based RIAs like Photoshop Express can do.