Comments on: CS4: Nearing the door

By: Leo

Leo — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:47:07 +0000

>>Ramón G Castañeda
>>Does unckecking the “compatability” box in the CS3′s save dialogue do anything other than remove the preview image?
>>It has nothing to do with the preview. At the very least, it does away with the flattened composite.
>>Hard drives are darn cheap these days. Storage space is no longer the issue it once was.
That flattened image is used as a preview by many external viewers… and is what I was talking about. Hard drives may be cheaper than in the past, but files are also bigger than ever, so compression is still appreciated.
Gothmeister — 02:32 AM on September 22, 2008
>>I hope that Adobe sell CS4 for the same price in europe as in america.
>>Alex, I’m sure it will; at the same number of US$/£/€.
>>I.e. the upgrade will be US$199 or £199 or €199
LOL Unfortunately I think you are right for those markets – even though that equates to a big difference in actual costs. Adobe software is always horrifically overpriced here in Australia – I wish it was $199 AUD, then it would only be 15% overpriced rather than the usual 150% :-(

By: Jason The Saj

Jason The Saj — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:01:32 +0000

“Why I may never pay for Photoshop again. And how Adobe may have pushed me to the point of supporting software piracy.”
I’ve been burned too many times with software purchases. I just got my CS3 installed on Aug 7th. I’ve used it two times. Once to see that it worked and once to test that it would open a Canon 40D RAW file.
Now CS4 is out, and once again I have paid hundreds of dollars to have an outdated product. None too happy.
I am sick of the secrecy bullshit that companies play. The fact that no one will tell you that they’re just several weeks from a major release. The mis-information that you get. (No, not all products are being updated for CS4 suite, some will be the CS3 versions, blah blah blah.)
I am not a professional. I am a hobbyist, albeit an advanced hobbyist. It’s not easy to justify a $450 software purchase for a hobby to the wife. And to have that software be outdated with no resource and no easy upgrade path. Now I have to spend the full $199 upgrade that people who’ve used CS3 for years now have to pay. WTF?
Am I pieved. Heck ya! I wouldn’t have a problem paying another $50 processing and packaging fee for the upgrade.
And yes, I know there will be dozens of replies that that’s life. Welcome to the world of software. Well guess what…
I’M SICK OF IT!!!!
And it won’t be me who loses. It’ll be Adobe. Because I sure as heck am not going to pay $199 to upgrade to CS4 when I just paid to upgrade to CS3. And I am tired of waiting and getting stuck in this part of the upgrade cycle. A similar thing happened to me when I got CS2. CS3 came out shortly thereafter. So I am tired of being two years behind the curve.
So let me suggest that Adobe consider some policy changes. Be more open about releases. Offer upgrade insurance or a reduced upgrade price for those in that last quarter before the release.
Because right now, if I don’t get this worked out. I am going to use CS4. I’m just not going to pay for it. (Because morally, I feel justified. I try to pay for all my software and be legit. But this leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. I feel lied too, deceived and swindled. So my moral qualms have pretty much been extinguished.)
The sad thing is, I am otherwise very very supportive of Adobe products. I’ve done YouTube video campaigns in support of Adobe.
But us amateurs are constantly screwed over by this sales method. The professionals buy the new version as soon as it comes out. Because they make money from your software. Us amateurs make little to no money. We are not able to justify immediate purchases at release. Hopefully Adobe will consider revising it’s policies. Or it will have lost at least one CS4 “purchase”.

By: Gothmeister

Gothmeister — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:32:13 +0000

>>I hope that Adobe sell CS4 for the same price in europe as in america.

By: Dan P.

Dan P. — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:29:27 +0000

Will CS4 ship with both 64 and 32 bits for Windows in the same box? I have 64 bit desktop and a 32-bit laptop. [Yes, it'll be a single installer containing two binaries. --J.]

By: Ramón G Castañeda

Ramón G Castañeda — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:26:23 +0000

Does unckecking the “compatability” box in the CS3′s save dialogue do anything other than remove the preview image?
It has nothing to do with the preview. At the very least, it does away with the flattened composite.
Hard drives are darn cheap these days. Storage space is no longer the issue it once was.

By: Leo

Leo — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:14:42 +0000

Thanks Chris (& Ramon) – I wasn’t aware you were an Adobe programmer. Its great being able to talk to someone on the team ;-)
I forgot when I was posting that some types of compression are lossy and guess that would probably rule it out jpeg type compression for most PS users, then again Nikon offer a RAW format using lossy compression.
I have been experimenting, and PS does do some strange things – adding a blank layer doubles the size of the PSD, adding another blank layer has little impact. I guess a single layer image acts as its own preview, and a multi layer image has a seperate preview…
Does unckecking the “compatability” box in the CS3′s save dialogue do anything other than remove the preview image?

By: Chris Cox

Chris Cox — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:14:42 +0000

PSD/PSB use run length encoding for 8 bit image data, and ZIP/FLATE for 16 and 32 bit image data (with predictors). Some non-image data is also ZIP/FLATE compressed.
The only image data that is uncompressed is 16 bit previews, because of backward compatibility issues (when I compressed it, other applications crashed, they didn’t expect it to be compressed).
JPEG/MP3 are lossy, and semi-fast.
The really advanced lossless compression algorithms are far from fast. Even ZIP/Flate can be painfully slow depending on the data it is compressing.
If you believe that you have a strong need for a maximum compression file format and can live without compatibility, please file a feature request for it. I have trouble convincing those pesky product managers that we should spend time on such things. :-)

By: Ramón G Castañeda

Ramón G Castañeda — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:40:58 +0000

Leo,
You do know that Chris Cox actually writes a lot of Photoshop’s code, don’t you? Look for his name on the Photoshop splash screen next time you launch the application.
You are wrong. PSD does use its own lossless compression.

By: Stefan Klein

Stefan Klein — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:41:35 +0000

John, does that mean (concerning Pixel Bender etc.) that all filters will be GPU accelerated or just some new filters? [It's only the new stuff, and the plan is to ship it on Adobe Labs instead of in the box. --J.]

By: Leo

Leo — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:45:42 +0000

Chris – as far as I know PSD doesn’t use any compression… do you have evidence to the contrary?
Reasonable compression can be done reasonably quicky – e.g. JPEG, MP3 and DNG. Files may actually open faster under some circumstances as uncompression can be faster than file transfer…
[Note that JPEG and MP3 are lossy, and you wouldn't want to use that approach in a format like PSD (where the file is likely to be opened, re-edited, and re-saved many times). And in fact, if that is the approach you want to take, you can elect to save your layered file as a TIFF using lossy (or lossless) compression. --J.]
Yes, there would be an adjustment phase while third party software adjusted to the new format, but it would be worth it, and easily overcome by Adobe offering an uncompressed format for maximum compatability.

By: Chris Cox

Chris Cox — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:52:04 +0000

Yes, it is possible to get better file sizes than PSD while retaining all the information. However, you give up all compatibility with other applications that PSD enjoys, and compatibility with older versions of Photoshop. You would also give up fast loads and saves. And chances are that such an advanced file format would not be supported by third parties because they would need Photoshop code to render the file.
Oh, yeah, and because the data would be re-rendered on the fly — the image you get tomorrow might not be the same image you saved today due to bug fixes and small changes in the software. And if you used a smart filter, that could change too. Working around that means storing extra copies of your image data (like PSD does).
PSD is not the best compression technology, nor the best image edit-list format around. PSD is a safe, well known, well supported format that gets decent compression and really stores all the data that you are seeing and working with – so that you’ll still see the same thing tomorrow.
I’ve been working on improved file formats for a long, long time. But there are no good answers. (easy, portable, fast or small – pick one)

By: Leo

Leo — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:19:27 +0000

Alex : Add Australia to the list for price parity!
There is no good reason why software should be different prices in different markets.

By: Leo

Leo — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:16:54 +0000

Blurrylens – I’m with you. PSDs should be compressed – if its good enough for RAW files its good enough for PSD. Even Adobe’s own RAW format (DNG) supports compression.
David – I’m not sure why you think PNGs have three times the colour data of RAWs – they don’t, RAWs also have 3 channels – red, green and blue straight from the sensor.
You are correct in that PSDs can have 16 bit colour and that RAWS gnerally have 12 or 14 bit colour but you can also set PS to 8 bits per channel…
So a single layer 16 bit PSD should only be a little bigger than a 14bit compressed RAW file… and an 8 bit one PSD considerably smaller.

By: alex

alex — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:58:08 +0000

I hope that Adobe sell CS4 for the same price in europe as in america.

By: Stefan Klein

Stefan Klein — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:23:19 +0000

I`ve just watched the Photoshop World keynote online. John, you talked about Pixel Bender and showed real time filter previews. Are they part of PS CS4?
[This technology builds on the same base that enables fast, smooth pan and zoom, etc. in the next release, but the filter support itself narrowly missed the cut for inclusion in the box. The plan is to offer it via Adobe Labs soon after we ship. --J.]