News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

March 23, 2007

software

Leopard will boost Photoshop CS3 speed

Posted Mar. 23, ’07, 2:03 PM PT by Scott Silverman
Category | Software

Photoshop CS3Apparently we have more to look forward to than just native Intel support in the CS3 version of Photoshop. Adobe’s Russell Williams has noted that Photoshop CS3 will integrate more throughly with Leopard by enabling virtual memory buffering. As Williams explains:

Buffering is disabled by default in CS3 (Creative Suite 3) when running on Tiger because of an OS issue. Every 30 seconds, the OS pauses Photoshop for anywhere from a fraction of a second to several seconds as it manages that giant buffer cache. If you’re painting, this is a big problem, and it’s why we made the “disable VM buffering” plugin available for CS2. Apple says that issue is fixed in Leopard, but we haven’t verified that yet.

The current plan is to enable VM buffering for big RAM machines running Leopard and disable it for Tiger. But we’ll provide an “enable VM buffering” plugin to override this on Tiger if you don’t mind the Tiger pause (couldn’t resist).

I must say that after waiting so long for both the Intel version of CS3 from Adobe, and Apple’s long-overdue Leopard, I’m glad to see that something is to come of it. Closer communication and tighter integration between OS and application is exactly what’s required in today’s world of fast hardware and massive amounts of addressable memory.


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