Mike Wong from plug-in developer onOne has posted some details about their Photoshop compatibility roadmap. He writes:
Windows versions of our plug-ins have been 64-bit now for months… We are converting our plug-ins over to be 64-bit compatible on the Mac OS X side… Our goal is to have Photoshop CS5 compatible updates for the current versions of our plug-ins available within 30 days of Photoshop CS5 being made widely available…. That means we should have everything out there for you to download by June 12, 2010.
More generally, 32-bit Mac plug-ins should run just fine in Photoshop CS5, provided you choose the “Open in 32-bit mode” option in Get Info. That’s analogous to the situation on Windows, where you can run your older plug-ins in the 32-bit version of the app. (On Mac Photoshop is a single 32/64-bit binary, whereas on Windows it’s two discreet apps.)
I’ll post news about other developers’ 64-bit migration plans as I get it, and I look forward to sharing some great Mac 64-bit benchmarks soon.
One question btw, is InDesign CS5 and Illustrator CS5 also 64-bit?
[No, not on the desktop. (InDesign Server has been a 64-bit app on Windows since CS4.) The better question is, what would 64-bit deliver in those apps that you’re missing today? Unless you want to address mass quantities of memory (which you may if you’re doing giant maps, etc.), 64-bit is kind of a non-issue. I’m guessing you’d get more bang out of things like GPU acceleration–though not being on those teams and not knowing their code bases at all, I don’t want to assert anything with too much confidence. –J.]
John, I know you meant “discrete” and were just fishing for pedants. You caught me! But my real question is, will GPU acceleration in CS5 cause any performance differences between Leopard and Snow Leopard on the Mac? I’m looking forward to my upgrade in May/June…
OnOne’s GenuineFractals 6 plugin has indeed had a 64-bit version for months. But its memory management, at any rate on Windows, is seriously broken and it should be completely avoided, at least until a build later than the current 6.0.4 is released. I’m not being dramatic; OnOne have acknowledged the problems by email and their engineers are said to be hard at work on a resolution. Good on them, though why they don’t pull the 64-bit plug-in in the meantime, or post a note on their website, is beyond me. Maybe CS5 compatibility has been put ahead of fixing the plugin for 64-bit CS4. Maybe compatibility with CS5 will fix the problems with CS4. That would be nice. As a product, I can’t recommend Genuine Fractals highly enough, but it is currently not in a fit state for use in 64-bit Photoshop, at least on Windows.
I read more about PS improvements than about Ae in the last 10 Years.
Whats wrong with me?
Should i’ve rather choose to be a graphic designer to have more benefits than a Motion Graphics Designer?
God, i’m so lucky about it not to work for Adobe. Strange Company.
John, how about NIK, any info?
[I haven’t heard an update, but I’ll see what I can find out. –J.]
John,
I hope at some point Adobe stops worrying about will you see any benefit to having something like InDesign in 64-bit and just slowly convert all of your apps to 64-bit. Of course doing the ones that will see the biggest benefit.
But at some point they all need to be 64-bit since that is the future of operating systems and computers. I figure we have may two or three Windows updates before 64-bit will be the only option and that is as it should be. Thankfully as slow as Microsoft has been with updates to Windows that gives Adobe about 4 decades (yes that was sarcasm, big time.)
So far I think Adobe has been doing well in their choice of applications to make 64-bit first. They/You have definitely hit the nail on the head. I myself would like to see Bridge and ACR 64-bit next.
Robert
Why didn’t (or did) Adobe consider creating a system that would allow 32 and 64 bit plugins? I’m thinking like how Apple’s Safari supports a separate process for flash? Wouldn’t making plugins run in a separate process be possible? Or are they more integrated than they look?
[We actually did just that to compensate for the fact that QuickTime (the full-featured version used by content creators, not the stripped-down “QuickTime X” version in Snow Leopard) is a 32-bit-only process. It’s all expensive dev & testing work, so we couldn’t go beyond that and instead focused on updating plug-in support to host 64-bit processes. –J.]