Photoshop CS4 Extended to allow painting directly onto 3D model

no more paint, save, refresh! you see it as it is! huzzah!

and the Content-Aware Scaling is also amazing!

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshopextended/features/?view=topnew

Wow. I'd read that CS4 was to the most significant improvement to Photoshop in 10 years, but I had no idea they were adding all that. I figured the paint-on-the-model thing would be coming, but it looks like that's just the tip of a pretty amazing iceberg. I'm incredibly excited about the new panels. And that content-aware scaling does look really cool. I'll be curious to see how well it works with different kinds of images. Also, the new fluid rotation, pan, & zoom controls look like they'll be really handy.

Looks like they knocked it out of the park with this one.

That said, I'll have to submit an "I'll believe it when I see it" on the alleged new "instant access to Bridge". The thing I've always hated most about Bridge is that it takes forever and a day to launch. If they've truly solved that problem, then maybe it will finally be useful. But I'm not holding my breath.




On a side note, Mac users, my condolences. In case anyone is unaware, due to a spectacularly massive f*ck-up by Apple, the 64-bit version of CS4 will be Windows-only. I think it's safe to assume that a good many of the new features will require 64-bit to run at full speed.

If anyone wants to know what Apple's great snafu was on this, from what I read, Apple apparently gave Adobe the wrong specs for their kernel, and then didn't tell them it was wrong until many months of CS4 development had already been done. Since there aren't enough Mac users in the world for Adobe to recoup their cost if they were to do a rewrite, they had no choice but to scrap the 64-bit Mac version entirely. Ouch.

But on the bright side, at least you won't have to upgrade your filters. 32-bit filters won't work with 64-bit Photoshop anyway, so Mac users will at least be able to save a little money in that regard.

oooo tell me moreeee i was gunna get cs3 but this one sounds even betterr

I'd wait. CS4 is due out in October.

yeah, a lot of stuff remains to be seen. if adobe delivers with this, it will be amazing. since they're touting leveraging GPU cycles, i think that should rellay help a TON with speed as well.

it's disappointing that the 64-bit version won't be hitting Macs for CS4. i had heard rumblings about it, in reference to Carbon vs. Cocoa development and Adobe not wanting to switch on their own dime for this version, but oh well. i'm a patient fellow. i can do without 64-bit this time around for my home machine.

we're a full PC shop at my office now, so it's all good to go!

even more so with the improvements to Illustrator! Multiple art boards that can be exported to multipage PDFs!(we went to InDesign to get around that, after moving from FreeHand). transparency WITHIN gradients, with full control at each color stop!(this also works in Photoshop). i know some of these features are carryovers from integrating Freehand into the mix, but it's still nice to have them in Illustrator.

there's so much new stuff, it's hard to remember it all!

Oh wow. I hadn't even looked yet at what's new for Illustrator, or for the rest of the suite. Exciting stuff.

Could this be the end of.....seams? The mind boggles....now to start planning how to hawk my neices and nephew on eBay so I can buy a copy

I had resolved it'd be a cold day in Arizona before I upgraded another Adobe product, because I'm afraid CS DRM will become like Acrobat DRM. But these changes might actually be worth a look.

Just...gonna have to check the specs on those 27 Tissue Sample Monitoring Tasks (TSMTs) they'll leave running on my system...

I don't want to derail the thread, but I'm curious Zhenya. What "Acrobat DRM" are you talking about?

The only thing I can think of off hand is the fact that you can restrict documents against editing, which is an absolutely crucial feature for ensuring that PDF is a viable medium for legal documents. I rely on digitally signed contracts all the time in my work. The ONLY reason I can do that is the fact that all parties involved can be confident that the content of any given contract can't be changed after it's been signed. Without that feature, I'd need to use snail mail and hard copies, which is not only very slow and considerably more expensive, it's also worse for the environment. Keeping everything digital is a win-win all around, and DRM is absolutely crucial for it.

I fail to see what could possibly be the downside in what I just mentioned. So I have to assume you must have meant something else. What was it? And why do you assume, whatever it is, that it would be applied to every Adobe product?



Sorry, but I'm not getting the reference here. What is a TSMT, and how does it relate to Adobe software?

If you're trying to imply that running a program like Photoshop causes you to end up with a bunch of little background applications also running, that's just not true. If you're talking about things like Acrotray and Version Cue, they're easy enough to disable if you don't want them. They are handy, though, so I'd recommend using them, but if you really want to turn them off you certainly can. Beyond that, I can't think of any other Adobe programs that run in background.

So what did you mean?

I'm guessing Zhenya is talking about the fact that PS periodically phones home to make sure you're running a legit copy and not a bootleg.

Oh, how disappointing that the CS4 won't be available for Macs! Does anyone know if they'll release for Macs later on? Or do we have to wait for CS5?
Thanks,
-Milla

CS4 will be out for Macs, just not in a 64-bit version.

This is beyond exciting. I've been able to use photoshop tools on objects using the Zapp link plug in for Zbrush, but it's a tad clunky (one "freezes" a snapshot, textures in PS, then exports it back to Zbrush).

I also really like the adjustment palette. Being able to non-destructively tweak the various adjustments will be terrific! (I think there was something like this in CS3, but I never got around to upgrading from CS2)

I'll wait for the reviews to see how robust the 3d painting actually is, but from the sounds of it this might be the first "must have" PS upgrade since 7.1.

Apparently uses OpenGL, which is good to know.

http://www.photoshopuser.com/cs4/

http://www.photoshopuser.com/?page=cs4/videos&video=corey_3d

A couple things to point out. First, Adobe's lack of 64-bit in CS4 isn't the result of some screw-up on Apple's part... that's all Adobe. They opted to go that route, and not put the resources into it.

Second, while the Mac version is "only 32-bit" it's still a strong enough contender to be the machine of choice that Adobe used in the launch/announcement event demonstrations. Why? Because the majority of the performance improvements in CS4 boil down to optimization for GPU's. In non-geek speak, they basically found a way to put the processing power that better video cards to work for Photoshop (GPU=graphics processing unit). Folks on a stock machine from your typical Windows compatible manufacturer won't actually realize any benefit, because those companies tend to use relatively low end video cards. Not because they're bastards, but because there's lots of demand for cheap computers.

But all the above probably won't have much impact on us using the app for Second Life. That power and those performance gains are specifically geared towards professionals working on HUMONGOUS files (individual images of 10GB or more).

The 3D .OBJ support is great, but it's worth pointing out that it's also in PhotoShop CS3 Extended.

I'm not sure where you're getting that, TriloByte. The story on this is well known, and was first told many months ago. If you want to research it, just type "CS4 64-bit Mac" into any search engine, and you'll find dozens of articles on it. If I were you, I'd start with the blog of John Nack, principle program manager for Photoshop: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/photoshop_lr_64.html

You can read for yourself right there, Apple didn't tell Adobe (and lots of other developers) that they were cancelling 64-bit Carbon until it was way too late. In fact, they'd been saying exactly the opposite right up until last June. Had they told Adobe earlier about their change of plans, there might have been time to port CS4 to Cocoa, but since they kept quiet about it for so long, there was absolutely nothing Adobe could do. Their hands were tied.



There could be any number of reasons why the screenshots are of the Mac version. You can't pretend to know why any more than I could. If I had to guess, though, I'd say it has more to do with history than anything else. Photoshop was first developed for the Mac, and screenshots of it with Mac GUI elements have been pretty much the standard in Adobe's demonstrations ever since. That doesn't say anything about what system they might or might not think works better or worse TODAY. My guess is they consider them to be pretty well equal (64-bit snafu not withstanding).

No one's trying to say that the 32-bit Mac version of CS4 will be any worse than the 32-bit Windows version. That's not in any way part of the discussion. It's just unfortunate that Mac users won't be able to have the 64-bit version is all. Many Windows users won't either, since obviously not every Windows user has Vista 64. I'd speculate that the majority at this point still have XP 32 and/or Vista 32. But at least the 64-bit version exists for Windows, for those who want it.




To that I would say two things. First, it is precisely Second Life users who have the high powered graphics cards of which you just spoke. The vast majority of the SL user base has medium to high end graphics hardware. If you're intertested, here's a listing from almost a year ago, showing what 99.5% of SL users had at the time: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/15/typical-frame-rate-performance-by-graphics-cardgpu/ . Walk each model forward by one generation to reflect the past year's worth of computer buying/upgrading, and you'd probably have a pretty good cross section of what people are using now.

Second, while you're right that the biggest advantage for 64-bit will be for very large files, that doesn't mean the benefits with smaller files will be trivial. Again, I defer to John Nack: "In our testing, when an app isn't using a large data set (one that would otherwise require memory swapping), the speedup due to running in 64-bit mode is around 8-12%." In other words, it's an average of a 10% increase in overall speed with texture-sized files. That might not be a ton, but it's not shabby either. Over the course of a solid week, that could be four billable hours saved.

And that's assuming there aren't other memory-hogging applications (like SL) running at the same time as Photoshop. Throw a few other graphics apps into the mix, and the performance gains could be enormous, even with small individual files.


Not quite. In CS3, you can't paint directly on the model. You paint on a flat canvas, and then you see the model update every time you save. But in CS4, you get to paint right onto the model's surface. That makes all the difference in the world.

And that's just for starters. The addition of manipulators and a ground plane automatically makes CS4 lightyears ahead of CS3 in terms of what you can do with 3D models inside the program. CS3's handling of models and lighting is pretty clunky. CS4 should behave more like dedicated 3D paint programs do, which is huge.

Also, many 3D formats will be importable/exportable in CS4 in addition to just OBJ.

And the new features list goes on and on from there. If even half the things they're saying actually meet expectations, CS4 should bury CS3 easily.

Great! Thanks, Yumi

/me temporarily puts her Halloween planning aside to start a list for Santa...

For those of us "down under" (Asia-Pacific), the price to buy it locally is super inflated beyond the current currency conversions. USD999 versus AUD1495 (which is equal to USD1250 at time of posting this). Why is there such a big difference in cost?
I wonder what part-time course I could enrol in to get it for the student discount... hmmm... should have a look for one tomorrow.

I'll be keeping an eye out for more reviews and demonstations when it becomes available in October, and I am downloading the trial when it comes out in November... but by the looks of it... that's one SWEET piece of software! (Sweet/Suite... get it?? I'VE HAD TOO MUCH COFFEE TODAY!!!)

/me sticks Santa's list on the fridge and waits for him to see it the next time he goes to get a glass of milk for his cookies...

I'm afraid Photoshop will become more like Acrobat, which runs a licensing service (fnplicensingservice). I'm just sick of every new piece of software leaving one or more of these damned things running even when I'm not using the software. Even long after I've stopped using the software

iTunes leaves no fewer than three of these running. Google Lively? Apparently it came with something called googleupdate. cdburnxp.exe? No clue where that even came from. I could go on and on. I have to look up everything in task manager periodically just to make sure I haven't picked up any keyloggers or other crap, and these "helper" applications just make the process more time-consuming. And because there are so many of them that are "legitimate" there's fertile ground for malware writers to maliciously name thier wares to look like one of these damned things.

My recent trouble burning data DVDs? Do I wonder if it's this cdburnxp.exe or some other thing I didn't ask for? My time to investigate these things is not theirs for the taking.

Since Adobe has shown themselves not to be above running tasks on my machine to constantly monitor whether I've stolen their precious software I don't give them the benefit of doubt. I just assume Photoshop will become more intrusive and annoying. My reward for having given them thousands of dollars.

I can't wait as i work for Adobe and we get all the products for free. Time to upgrade the Master Collection CS3 I will let you know what its like

Ah, the licensing service. Sorry I didn't realize what you meant at first. I thought you were talking about DRM for media/content, not for the software itself.

Just so you know, FLEXnet licensing is used by a lot of programs, not just Adobe stuff, and not just Acrobat. It's extremely common with high end graphics software. Programs like Maya, 3DS Max, AutoCAD, and many others all use it, as does Photoshop CS3.


In principle, I totally agree with you. Ideally, it should shut itself off when relevant programs are not in use.

However, there is arguably good reason for keeping it running. If you manually shut it down (Start -> Run -> services.msc -> FLEXnet Liciensing Service -> Stop), you'll find that any program that uses it will take a little bit longer to start up. This is because the program has to restart the licensing service and let it do its thing before it can run fully. But by starting the licensing service just once, and leaving it running thereafter, you avoid having to go through that every time.

And it's not like it consumes a lot of resources. It's only 2 kilobytes of memory, no matter how many programs you've got that use it.

But again, in principle, I agree that it probably would be better for it to remove itself from memory when it's not in use. Small as it is, every little bit does add up. Surely better solutions must be possible.



If you think licensing shouldn't exist, there's where we disagree. Software makers do have a right to curb piracy. Nothing will ever stop determined thieves, of course, but casual theft is prevented by licensing utilities such as this.



If you think the presence of a 2 kilobyte licensing service is so "intrusive and annoying" as to outweigh the benefits of having Photoshop, then by all means use something else. Me, I can spare a couple of kilobytes for what PS does for me.

Please do.

I have CS 2 and have postponed on updating as CS 3 object handling didnt really impress me.
But this upgrade looks fantastic, the direct painting on 3d objects looks to be the killer option for
upgrading now. Selections, masking and adjustments look smarter as well.

Are you kidding me. I bought CS3 extended but still haven't really used it. The reason? Not enough machinery even though my iMac was fairly new.

On the upside? As a Mac user I couldn't use this CS4 ex anyway.

Downside again? I've been wanting one like this forsinceever.

ETA: Am leaving original post intact for integrity reasons but...guess what? CS4 for Mac will be out in November (according to Amazon and other places).