No 64bit for Photoshop CS4 on OS X

[opeter]

Anybody who is ANYBODY in the Graphics field knows that a REAL designer/artist doesn't use a Windows version of Photoshop or Illustrator.

Companies that use PC's in their art departments are jokes. They like to use the "Cost & Support" excuse for not using the machines that were really meant to do these jobs. If you buy a cheap PC to run PS on, good luck getting it to do anything more than create a couple layers and some cloning.

Sorry, but that absolutly not true. There are "many problems" with Apple devices in foreign countrys like mine while Apple products have not bigger market-share.

The first thing is: MacOS X is not translated into many languages.

Look here, how many langueages does support MS:
Locale Language Program.

Than there is the problem, that Apple stuff is quite expensive here in EU. You know, their caltulations equals 1 $ = 1 €.

I'm working with 4 press services here in my local area, and only one of these has 2 Mac (quite old models now: 1 x PowerMac G4 533 Digital Audio and 1 x 800 MHz Quicksilver - these two are mainly used as RIP station and sincer the drivers for the machine are only MacOS 9.x compatible).

Most people i know are also working on Windows PCs. Some of these were switchers, but not to the Apple sider, rather opposite.

Why is that? Because most of us don't have time and money to bring/send our Mac workstation into any service that is 300 km or more from us... if a RAM dies i simply go into the local PC shop and buy a new one. Or of course there is also the guarantee, if you buy separate parts.

Maybe Apple is successfull on big EU markets (UK, Germany, France, maybe Italy, Spain... Poland?). But in other countrys EU (most eastern states) there is no local Apple Support or Distribution just some Resellers.

Read this:
http://wewantapplehungary.com/

I also did sold my PowerMac G5. I had so much bad luck with it - 3x change of the Motherboard, two of these were in guarantee time, the third had to payer out of pocket. For 700 € in 2007 i would get a superduper PC config. And finally after so much trouble i did decide to sale my PowerMac. Now i'm on a PC and for now i'm quite

Sadly, thats the true.

My main problem with Apple is, that they don't have a computer, a case, that would be the 1/3 or max. half price of the Mac Pro, a computer, where you could simply upgrade the RAM, change the graphic card, add a second HDD.
A Mac mini is not my option. The Mac Pro is far too expensive.

Also sorry for my english.

And tell me how exactly you will utilize that 64-bit technology? You won't.

Of course i will not utilize it. But the 64-bit Photoshop is meant for those who need to work with large files and need that much of memory support (4 GB and up).

Right now i'm using 4 GB of RAM and that is good enough for my everyday work.

 

[AidenShaw]

Of course i will not utilize it. [64-bit] But the 64-bit Photoshop is meant for those who need to work with large files and need that much of memory support (4 GB and up).

Even if you aren't working with large images that could use the extra memory support, you could still benefit from the predicted 8% to 12% performance improvement from using the better 64-bit ISA.

 

[chirpity]

canvas

for anyone fed up with adobe, i recommend taking a look at canvas. it has most of the features that you will use from photoshop and illustrator in one program and doesn't cost as much.
http://www.acdsee.com/

 

[AidenShaw]

for anyone fed up with adobe, i recommend taking a look at canvas. it has most of the features that you will use from photoshop and illustrator in one program and doesn't cost as much.
http://www.acdsee.com/

Considering that Canvas seems to be a 32-bit application for Windows only, what's the connection with this thread?

(Click "System Requirements" on the Canvas 11 page...)

 

[gnasher729]

Not nearly as many as it took to rewrite 4x the millions for Windows 64 bit.

I don't think you have much experience writing software, do you? If you have developers that are worth their money, then transition from 32 to 64 bit is no big deal at all. Remember when Apple showed off Mathematica, which was ported from 32 bit to 64 bit in a day, back when the G5 was introduced?

 

[Analog Kid]

In fairness... one person said that Cocoa requires the use of Objective-C. That's patently false... you can write your code in C++, Java, or Objective-C and wrap it in an interface created in Interfacebuilder.

Where do you get that idea? Cocoa is Objective-C. You can mix and match Cocoa calls with C++ calls, but if you want access to the Cocoa API you're accessing it in Objective-C.

From Apple's documentation:

Objective-C++ does not add C++ features to Objective-C classes, nor does it add Objective-C features to C++ classes. For example, you cannot use Objective-C syntax to call a C++ object, you cannot add constructors or destructors to an Objective-C object, and you cannot use the keywords this and self interchangeably. The class hierarchies are separate; a C++ class cannot inherit from an Objective-C class, and an Objective-C class cannot inherit from a C++ class. In addition, multi-language exception handling is not supported. That is, an exception thrown in Objective-C code cannot be caught in C++ code and, conversely, an exception thrown in C++ code cannot be caught in Objective-C code.

In particular, note the inability to subclass across languages. That's likely to be a large part of the problem. Each Cocoa class that Adobe wants to truly integrate will first need to be wrapped in C++.

My understanding of the acrimony isn't just that the UI needs to be recoded (or, as you point out, just re-crafted in IB) but that all of the system level code needs to be recoded to use the Cocoa APIs.

This is where Apple learns how badly people really want to develop for Mac. I love writing in ObjC because it's cute and fast and fun. I can only use it for my own personal projects though, because I can't waste corporate resources on it. Professionally I feel the same way about ObjC as I do about C#-- they're a step beyond APIs in forcing developer lock-in at the language level. Yes you can find compilers for each on other platforms, but face it-- you aren't going to write C# on a Mac or ObjC on Windows.

I don't think you have much experience writing software, do you? If you have developers that are worth their money, then transition from 32 to 64 bit is no big deal at all. Remember when Apple showed off Mathematica, which was ported from 32 bit to 64 bit in a day, back when the G5 was introduced?

If you have developers that are worth their money, you and they don't want them spending their time translating code. You want them spending their time using their skills.

If I had to guess, the first iteration of 64bit Photoshop for OS X is going to look like it was written by interns, because I suspect much of it will have been.

 

[aLoC]

I don't know why they have to drop Carbon. What about developers who want to use pure C, now they have no GUI framework? Not everyone believes in OO.

 

[chirpity]

It's 32-bit, but it's not windows only. don't know where you get that from. i'm using it right now.
i'm just giving an alternative to photoshop and adobe software that works really well - and always has.

Considering that Canvas seems to be a 32-bit application for Windows only, what's the connection with this thread?

(Click "System Requirements" on the Canvas 11 page...)

 

[Analog Kid]

It's 32-bit, but it's not windows only. don't know where you get that from. i'm using it right now.
i'm just giving an alternative to photoshop and adobe software that works really well - and always has.

Just to be clear, you're using a native OS X build Canvas 11? Or are you using and earlier version? My understanding is that when the product transfered ownership, they discontinued the Mac build.

 

[AidenShaw]

Just to be clear, you're using a native OS X build Canvas 11? Or are you using an earlier version? My understanding is that when the product transfered ownership, they discontinued the Mac build.

I saw this too - there seems to be a "Canvas X" product for Apple OSX, but "Canvas 11" has no mention of an Apple version on the website.

 

[jragosta]

Sorry, but that absolutly not true. There are "many problems" with Apple devices in foreign countrys like mine while Apple products have not bigger market-share.

The first thing is: MacOS X is not translated into many languages.

Right. Mac OS X is only translated into the languages used by 95% of the world population - and 99.9% of the world population involved with high end graphics work.

 

[Jotbolger]

Who uses 64bit Windows?

It seems a lot of effort for Adobe to go to for a tiny user base. I don't know anyone who runs Windows 64bit. Why don't Adobe shift the Win64 resource to developing the cocoa version, since ALL Mac OS X users (at least those capable of running CS4) are running a 64 bit OS by default, and a tiny proportion of Windows users are running the 64 bit version since there are hardly any applications that support it.

For those who don't know, Windows 64bit version is a completely different ball game from the standard (32 bit) Windows XP or Vista (Home, Pro, cut-down, pimped-up or whatever sub-version) and device drivers and applications have to be written to specifically support Windows 64 bit. Hence, hardly anyone uses it.

 

[AidenShaw]

I don't know anyone who runs Windows 64bit.

You should make more friends, then.

...since ALL Mac OS X users (at least those capable of running CS4) are running a 64 bit OS by default,

People with G3/G4 and Core Duo systems don't count?

Why don't Adobe shift the Win64 resource to developing the cocoa version...

...device drivers and applications have to be written to specifically support Windows 64 bit.

Windows 64-bit is *not* completely different from Windows 32-bit. If you have a 64-bit clean source base, the same code will compile into both a 32-bit application or driver and a 64-bit version. You may need a few changes, but "completely different" is simply FUD.

So, once Adobe gets the Photoshop code base to be 64-bit clean, they'll be able to build and sell a 64-bit Windows version - same source, just built once with the 32-bit compiler option and once with the 64-bit option. They'll also need to update the installation kit - either to make separate discs for 32 and 64 bit, or to put both on one disc and select the appropriate one during installation.

However, for Apple OSX Adobe has two tasks - make a "64-bit clean" version *and* rewrite from the Carbon "language" to the Cocoa "language".

So, the 64-bit work on Windows isn't "wasted" effort - the vast majority of that 64-bit work is still required to make the Apple 64-bit version. This applies to both the minimal changes necessary to work correctly in 64-bit mode, and design changes that may be useful to exploit 64-bit addressing. (For example, I'd expect that the 64-bit version would have some changes regarding how work files are used.)

...a tiny proportion of Windows users are running the 64 bit version since there are hardly any applications that support it.

And this is in contrast to the hundreds of 64-bit applications for Apple OSX, right?

We're on the leading edge of the 64-bit transition. This is mainly needed now for the memory support issue - too many *systems* are hurt by the 3.25 GiB memory limit. These systems will benefit from 64-bit Vista (and OSX) even without having 64-bit applications. In a couple of years (even by when CS4 is released) Vista 64-bit will be much more mainstream - as 4 GiB or more of RAM becomes the norm, so will 64-bit Vista.

Adobe should be praised for moving an application which can benefit from 64-bits (at least for some users) to that new level. It's too bad that Apple is erecting a roadblock by dropping support for a promised API, and forcing Adobe to spend a lot of engineering effort on changes that will be nearly invisible to the user. Apple developers are used to spending a lot of money just to stay in the game... (68K -> PPC, OS9 -> OSX, PPC -> x86, x86 -> x64, Carbon -> Cocoa...)


And, BTW, congratulations on your first post.

 

[RBR2]

Bad news for Apple

Well that's crappy... If Apple isn't careful they could lose their fairly strong presence in the upper end of the graphic arts industry if a windows guy can mess around with massive photos 10 times faster than the mac guy.

Bingo!

Very large image files are the standard among many pro photographers, especially in the landscape/nature photography segment. Some of the leaders in this field have full time photoshop people to process their images. These are the people who have traditionally purchased every new piece of kit that Apple have released because they needed the increased productivity.

I see these people moving on and leaving Apple behind. They just can not afford to stick with a second rate platform. Once they exit the platform many others could as well. There simply is no compelling reason to remain with Apple.

On the other hand, Adobe knows that the overwhelming majority of their market is Windows based. They will continue to provide software for the Apple platform so long as they make money from it, but when and if they get around to it.

This does not bode well for the future of Apple at all.

 

[SpinThis!]

Where are people getting this 10 times faster figure from? You only are going to get that if your have gargantuan, multi-terabyte sized files. It's more like 10% speedup on regular images, if that depending on what you're doing.

Very large image files are the standard among many pro photographers, especially in the landscape/nature photography segment.

Last time I checked, 21 megapixels (eg typical output from Canon's EOS-1Ds Mark III) is far from terabyte sizes that would benefit 64 bit processing. You would need files 100 times that and I don't see sensor sizes improving in that magnitude anytime soon.

And don't even get me started on intrinsic gains... Is a professional Mac user going to bare the brunt of stumbling through Windows just so they can get a 10% faster workflow in processing their images? At least for me, Mac OS X's interface easily provides a 10% speed-up over when I use Windows (I use both but prefer Mac) and I'm sure I'm not alone here. So I lose a second or so here... I make it up elsewhere being quicker with other tasks.

 

[RBR2]

Where are people getting this 10 times faster figure from? You only are going to get that if your have gargantuan, multi-terabyte sized files. It's more like 10% speedup on regular images, if that depending on what you're doing.


Last time I checked, 21 megapixels (eg typical output from Canon's EOS-1Ds Mark III) is far from terabyte sizes that would benefit 64 bit processing. You would need files 100 times that and I don't see sensor sizes improving in that magnitude anytime soon.

And don't even get me started on intrinsic gains... Is a professional Mac user going to bare the brunt of stumbling through Windows just so they can get a 10% faster workflow in processing their images? At least for me, Mac OS X's interface easily provides a 10% speed-up over when I use Windows (I use both but prefer Mac) and I'm sure I'm not alone here. So I lose a second or so here... I make it up elsewhere being quicker with other tasks.

I do not know the source of the 10X figure, but as to file size, a number of the top landscape photographers use drum scans of 3"x5" view camera images. I believe that many are also using medium format digital image capture which results in pretty large image files, though not as large as the drum scans.

 

[guet]

Looks more like a resource problem for Adobe, as they've had since 2001 to move from Carbon to Cocoa.

While I too will probably skip CS4, this is not a trivial problem, this delay has been caused by Apple.

They sent out lots of mixed messages on Carbon/Cocoa up to last year, telling devs they were equal partners, putting lots of development time into Carbon with HIView etc, developing many of their own apps with it, and promising full parity (for cross platform apps, Carbon is far more useful than cocoa). They even promised Carbon 64 support and wrote some of their own programs in it (including xCode).

So Adobe is taking this with equanimity, as they have in fact been messed around by Apple, along with a lot of other developers.

 

[xgman]

I had been using PS CS4 beta build m.379 and just tried build m.465 and now when linking CS3 plugins dir, I get an error message saying sorry no mutiprocessor support with fastmmx runtimes extensions etc. I wonder how this will effect overall performance compared to cs3?