Comments on: Pixel Bender arrives in Photoshop

By: Sam Corl

Sam Corl — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:46:57 +0000

Even though logged in as admin, I get an error message saying I don’t have permission to install pbplugin_ps32b_111708

By: Kevin Goldsmith

Kevin Goldsmith — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:48:37 +0000

the 4k x 4k limit was added because we saw some issues using larger textures even on cards that supported it. As far as which cards will/won’t work. We test card capabilities, so if you have a discrete graphics card that you bought in the last few years, it should work.

By: Stefan Klein

Stefan Klein — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:05:19 +0000

I could live with the preview window, because I have 2 monitors and can stretch the slider panel to the secondary monitor. So I have the preview window as large as my primary monitor.
But…..Pixel Bender is not colormanaged. If I use anything other than sRGB colors are off.
And currently it`s limited to 4096*4096 pixels. Over at the Pixel Bender forum I was told by one of the developers that they limited it, because there were problems with larger pictures even if the card could theoretically handle larger textures than 4*4K.
John, this limit is really a big handicap, because many new DSLRs have larger file sizes. Please press on the card makers to get their drivers updated and release a new PB version without that limit!

By: BJN

BJN — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:12:05 +0000

So this is the “wicked fast” stuff I saw in the pre-release keynote video.
It’s disappointing to get this tool as a plugin with a small preview window, but considering how much a headache the current GPU implementation is for many PS CS4 users, myself included, I can see why this wasn’t integrated into the application’s filters.

By: Allen Chou

Allen Chou — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:21:03 +0000

Ooops! I didn’t notice that I’ve made so many typos. How embarrassed :p

By: casimir

casimir — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:13:42 +0000

Hi Jack,
do you intend to support the other graphic cards for Pixel Bender, too. The Geforce 9500GT or the ATI V3700/V3750 ?
Regards,
Casimir
[I'm not really up on those cards' specs, so I'm not sure. --J.]

By: Stefan Klein

Stefan Klein — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:53:49 +0000

John, some questions:
When will there be a final release?
[This is the final release, actually. We don't plan to revise the plug-in for CS4. Sorry, I should have made that clearer. The purpose in using Labs in this case it to publish the code in a way that flags it as "useful, interesting, but experimental"--but not to suggest that there will be a subsequent version coming for this release. --J.]
I have a Geforce 8600GT with 512MB graphics RAM. The max image size that Pixel Bender can work with (on my PC) is 4096*4096 pixels. Why is it limited? The max. texture size of my card is 8192*8192.
What card do I need to work with larger files?
[Hopefully someone from the PB team is lurking and can offer an answer. --J.]
Btw., I`d like to see some “standard” filters like gaussian blur or smart sharpen.
Pixel Bender is really great, because it`s extremely fast!
[Yeah, people tend to like fast. ;-) --J.]

By: Trenton Moore

Trenton Moore — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:08:34 +0000

For CS4 only? No fair:(
[It relies on the GPU foundation we built into CS4. --J.]

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:41:05 +0000

Jack,
Just got my CS4 creative suite 4 design premium vista 32.
The pixel bender is a real blast.
I changed over and added this inDesign this year….Want to learn how to use it….really cool app….guys like me in KY just can’t read and write.
My best
Ken in KY

By: droste.pbk

droste.pbk — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:01:32 +0000

subblue now has a ‘Droste Effect’ filter using Pixel Bender that can be used in After Effects and Photoshop CS4. Click droste.pbk!

By: Allen CHou

Allen CHou — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:24:53 +0000

Oops, didn't I provided a like to my blog? It's http://cjcat.blogspot.com

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:15:31 +0000

Cool! I just gave it a spin and it works really well – even on my slow laptop GPU. Most of all, it’s great to be able to write simple plugins without needing to bother with the Photoshop SDK and (possibly worse) the OS SDK.
I do have two suggestions for the next release, though:
1) It would be nice if it would support Pixel Bender bytecode filters as well, for those cases where you don’t want to distribute the source.
2) An option to receive the image data in a common color space (linear ProPhoto RGB?) would be very useful. That way, one can write color-space aware plugins without any effort. Currently, you’d need to supply a version for every individual color space.
Simon

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:52:38 +0000

Ha! This is sooooo cool! I just managed to add the long-missed (at least by me) “Unpremultiply/Unmatte” command to Photoshop in less than ten minutes! This is going to save me loads of hours when doing complex knockouts. Thanks!!!
Don’t get me wrong, the plug-in and toolkit still need work (stuff like allowing to call up the color picker and the eyedropper for color parameters, the IDE telling me my shader is running slow just because I have a file selector dialog open et cetera, basically it is obvious in many places that it’s still a beta) but it is extremely useful where it is right now and we finally have a way to extend Photoshop that is 100% PiPL-resource-free. Congratulations, great job, keep up the fantastic work!

By: Daemon

Daemon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:18:23 +0000

Ah, awesome, another cool feature that will not work on my Windows XP x64! Keep them coming, to make me more jealous. [Unfortunately XP64 has a couple of things working against it. The XP graphics model isn't nearly as robust as what's in Vista, and because of XP64's low market share (esp. among consumers/gamers), driver makers haven't made it a priority compared to other platforms. My advice is to go to Vista64. --J.]

By: Ian Butterworth

Ian Butterworth — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:13:01 +0000

Note that the install instructions don’t exactly work on Vista. Double clicking in the mpx file runs the extension manager as a regular user and then you get errors saying you don’t have enough permission. You have to run the extension manager in administrator mode (right click and select run as administrator) then install the mpx from there.