PhotoShop CS4 unveiling set for September 23

Highly anticipated Creative Suite® 4 from Adobe will be launched on September 23. Adobe will webcast the unveiling and interested people can register to for it at this page. The live webcast is scheduled for 1PM Eastern time on the 23rd, so you might want to add it to your Blackberrys/iPhones.

The main attraction around this release is GPU based acceleration; in short blistering real-time performance. This is possible by leveraging the massive untapped potential of GPU based processing. GPUs have leapfrogged CPUs in terms of parallel computational power and complexity for some time now and it comes as no surprise that the industry begins to realise this and various such non-gaming related tasks are off loaded to the GPU rather than the CPU. No wonder that Intel decided to join the party with Larrabee.

GPUs traditionally have been stressed only when a 3d intensive app is launched. The rest of the time, the GPU sits mostly idle. Power saving mechanisms such as PowerPlay/PowerMizer obviously are in place to reduce the power consumption by down clocking the GPU. The flip side of this is to utilize the GPU for other common tasks. First step was offloading video decode/encode from CPU to GPU and now Adobe follows in the same vein.

In CS4, applying textures, color or text on 3d surfaces will be done instantly. You can also manipulate an ultra-resolution images with ease and no slowdowns. Creating 3d panorams from a series of images will also see a huge improvement in performance. Apply a series of filters and previews will also be snappy. All these performance improvements are bonus on top of an incremental addition of new features.

No details on pricing or release date yet. Adobe's campaign reads "Its going to be Brilliant". With so many new features and performance improvements, Adobe is set to fulfill on their promise.

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