NVIDIA and Adobe: creatively partnered
Creative Suite 4 utilises the parallel processing power of NVIDIA GPUs to provide consumers with a GPU-accelerated experience, resulting in faster performance and improved reliability. Photoshop CS4, arguably the most popular single application within Creative Suite 4, will use NVIDIA Quadro or GeForce GPUs to create a so-called interactive digital canvas.
An auto-detected NVIDIA GPU will enable real-time image rotation, high-quality 3D rendering, instant zooming and panning, and make changes to the view instantaneous and smooth, says NVIDIA.
The improvements don't stop there, either. There's GPU-accelerated anti-aliasing, brush resizing, 3D movement, high-dynamic-range tone mapping and colour conversion. Similarly, other Creative Suite 4 applications such as After Effects CS4 and Premier Pro CS4 can take advantage of NVIDIA Quadro GPUs to provide GPU-accelerated video processing - these benefits, however, won't be available on GeForce GPUs.
Later this year - around November, says Desai - will see the introduction of an Elemental RapiHD CUDA plug-in for Premiere Pro CS4. Using NVIDIA's CUDA programming language, it promises to deliver a performance gain of up to seven times over the CPU - allowing professionals to render Blu-ray quality material in real-time.
John Loiacono, senior vice president of creative solutions at Adobe, said:
A critical element of CS4 was to capture the enormous power of the GPU. The difference is astounding. Performance is important to creative professionals and with the NVIDIA GPU, they are assured to be able to interact with images and videos in a much faster, smoother, more engaging way.
NVIDIA's Dan Vivoli hails Creative Suite 4's GPU involvement as a "monumental milestone in the computer industry". Should the industry get behind GPGPU, we can look forward to graphics cards being branded as much more than a tool for just 3D gaming.
But what about those with graphics cards manufactured by NVIDIA's rivals?
NVIDIA tells us that Adobe's Creative Suite 4 GPU acceleration is built upon the OpenGL API, allowing the performance-boosting benefits to be harnessed by users of rival graphics cards. It adds, however, that the multi-year collaboration between NVIDIA and Adobe has led to Creative Suite 4 being built on NVIDIA hardware from start to finish. In other words, it'll work with your Radeon, but not quite as well as it could with your GeForce.
Ultimately, NVIDIA hopes that the transition to GPU-accelerated software will drive GPU upgrades. So, who fancies a GeForce 10,000 GT Photoshop Edition?
Official press release: NVIDIA GPUS POWER A CREATIVE REVOLUTION WITH ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE 4
