TG Daily reports that the next version of Adobe's Photoshop application will take advantage of video card graphics processing units (GPUs) to provide a dramatic improvement in performance.
So, what can you do with general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) acceleration in Photoshop? We saw 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. Another impressive feature was the import of a 3D model into Photoshop, adding text and paint on a 3D surface and having that surface directly rendered with the 3D models' reflection map.
These features are expected to be introduced in Adobe's next version of Creative Suite (CS4) which is expected in October of this year. GPU acceleration has been used in many aspects of Mac OS X's Core Animation and Core Image.
Update: Adobe Photoshop Project Manager John Nack, who gave the presentation cited in the TG Daily article, says that many of their claims are baseless. Regarding their claim of an October 1st release date for the next Photoshop release, Nack says that they "pulled a date apparently out of thin air." He also says that the technology he demonstrated has not been promised to appear in any particular future version of Photoshop.
Update 2: TGDaily responds to Nack's accusations and maintains the reporting of the events was essentially accurate.
