Underexposed

Adobe Systems has shared the first scrap of information about its next version of Photoshop, CS4, and it's a doozy: there will be a 64-bit version of the photo-editing software, but only for Windows and not for Mac OS X.

Adobe generally keeps features in the Windows and Mac versions at a level of parity, but that wasn't possible this time around because of a change Apple made last year to the Mac's programming underpinnings, John Nack, Adobe's product manager for Photoshop, said in an interview.

"We're not going to ship 64-bit native for Mac with CS4," Nack said. "We respect Apple's need to balance their resources and make decisions right for that platform. But it does have an impact on developers."

(Read the "What derailed the 64-bit train?" section below if you want more details on why Adobe concluded it had to change plans.)

What does 64 bits get you, anyway? Chiefly, an easier way for a processor and software to use more than 4GB of memory. In addition, the 64-bit versions of Intel and AMD x86 chips incorporate more data storage slots called registers that can improve performance.

But Nack took pains to say that moving to 64 bits, while useful, isn't like flipping a switch that doubles performance.

Modest performance improvements
Based on Adobe's preliminary testing, the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4 will give a performance kick of about 8 percent to 12 percent compared with the 32-bit version, Nack said. For one particular task--opening up a huge 3.2-gigapixel file on a system with a lot of memory--the 64-bit version is 10 times faster because it doesn't have to write the data that won't fit in memory onto a relatively slow hard drive.

In practice, a huge swath of Photoshop users won't be affected by the difference, at least initially. The transition from 32-bit to 64-bit computing has been creeping sluggishly across the personal-computing industry for years already, and it's going to be some more years before the transition is complete.

Advanced Micro Devices unveiled the first 64-bit x86 chip in 2003. Although AMD and Intel have moved their x86 processors to 64-bit designs, the new Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, is Apple's first full-fledged 64-bit operating system, and Microsoft's 64-bit versions of Windows are almost unheard of in real-world use.

But it's not unreasonable to assume CS4 will have to hold down the fort until 2010 or so, when a PC with 8GB of memory will be ordinary, and by then, the difference between Photoshop on the Mac and Windows likely will be more glaring--especially for those users who already had a 64-bit Photoshop CS3 on their wish lists.

Fortunately for Mac users, Intel-based machines can run Windows either with a dual-boot configuration or through virtualization software, so perhaps that could tide them over if Adobe obliges with permissive licensing.

Open the 64-bit floodgates?
Today, most folks with PCs don't bump too hard against 4GB memory limits--indeed, it's not easy to find mainstream computing hardware with memory slots for more than 4GB even when there's a 64-bit chip and operating system. But Photoshop can be a taxing application.

Images are getting bigger and bigger, and Photoshop often is used to composite many together on multiple layers or stitch them together into large panoramas. At the same time, people are starting to store more detail in each pixel, moving from 24 bits of color information to 48 bits and, in the case of the high dynamic range photography (HDR), often even more. Having more memory also improves Photoshop's ability to track the history of changes to a file.

I suspect the Adobe shift will be a harbinger that the rest of the software industry is finally getting ready to make the 64-bit shift. The Photoshop user base is a coveted one, and making sure consumers have the hardware drivers and other technology they need will be a useful incentive for moving 64-bit coding up the priority list.

One group of programmers that will doubtless be quick to move to 64 bit are those who sell plug-ins for Photoshop. The 64-bit version will require 64-bit plug-ins, Nack said. "We can't mix 32-bit and 64-bit processes," he said, adding that Adobe has a prerelease development program that helps programmers make the move.

That Mac OS X will miss out on initial 64-bit Photoshop support is somewhat perverse. Apple has chosen a straightforward transition to 64 bits for its operating system and its new, widely adopted product has arrived. Apple's smoother change is possible in part because Mac OS X can still use older 32-bit driver software to support hardware, whereas with corresponding drivers.

Microsoft began its 64-bit operating system transition with Windows XP, but it's putting more effort into the 64-bit version of Vista. Adobe expects 64-bit Photoshop to run on 64-bit XP, but only Vista will be supported, Nack said.

There are other Adobe Creative Suite applications, of course--the Premiere video-editing program springs to mind as another that could benefit from large-memory support--but Adobe isn't yet sharing details on those plans. It did announce Tuesday that Photoshop Lightroom version 2, which just entered beta testing, will be available in a 64-bit version. (Lightroom, for editing and cataloging raw photos from higher-end digital cameras, will work fine in 64-bit mode on Mac OS 10.5, Nack said.)

Other performance work
Nack and his boss, Kevin Connor, reiterated that 64-bit support doesn't mean a night-and-day performance improvement that Macs will miss out on.

"We fully expect that when we ship CS4, Mac users are going to be seeing performance improvements," Connor said.

And there are other hardware improvements besides 64-bit processors in the works. One big one is the increasing utility of graphics chips to process information as well as pump pixels to a screen.

"Graphics processors have become more powerful. We are very eager to take advantage of that power," Nack said.

What derailed the 64-bit train?
Until last June, Adobe had planned to move to 64 bit on Macs with CS4. But in June, Apple announced its technology plans at its Worldwide Developer Conference and that changed the situation for Adobe, Nack said.

Apple provides two technologies, Carbon and Cocoa, to help programmers take advantage of operating system services such as managing memory, fonts, or windows. Initially, Apple had planned to make both Carbon and Cocoa available in 64-bit incarnations, but Apple announced at the conference that only Cocoa would be.

Photoshop is written using Carbon, which dates from the earlier Mac OS 9 era and is better suited to cross-platform programming; Cocoa, like the newer Mac OS X, dates back to Jobs' previous company, Nextstep.

"When they chose not to do Carbon 64, we had to reevaluate our road map for getting there," Nack said. Adobe immediately assigned new programmers to the Cocoa switch "so we could make this transition as fast as possible, but as the saying goes, nine women can't make a baby in a month. You can only proceed at a certain pace," he said.

The amount of code that employs or interacts with Carbon features is substantial: about a million lines, and all of it must at least be reviewed, Nack said. Even today, "we don't yet know how much code needs to be rewritten or touched."

The Carbon-to-Cocoa switch was simply too massive to push back CS4 for just a couple months, he added.

"No one--Apple, Adobe, Microsoft--has attempted to move an application the size of Photoshop from Carbon to Cocoa," Nack said.

LAS VEGAS--In a departure from how it handled its Windows release, DxO Labs plans to begin a public beta testing for the Mac OS X version of its DxO Optics Pro software used to convert raw files from higher-end cameras.

This image illustrates the de-mosaicing process that's one aspect of converting raw image files from high-end cameras into more manageable formats such as JPEG or TIFF. DxO Optics Pro 5 features a new engine for that conversion process.

(Credit: DxO Labs)

DxO Labs released DxO Optics Pro version 5 for Windows last year, saying it hoped to release the Mac OS X version in November. However, the Mac version of the software now is scheduled for release on Feb. 22, said Luc Marin, DxO's director of marketing for photography, at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.

The company hopes to complete the final version in early spring, but issuing a public beta means the company will get feedback that makes a final release date uncertain, though, he said.

DxO was skeptical about public beta software, but the public "seems to be eating them up forever," Marin said. "In hindsight, we probably would have been better off doing it on day one (with the Windows version), so we're switching gears."

In addition, Marin said, DxO is planning an update next week that will support Canon's 1Ds Mark III and Nikon's D3, two new top-end SLR cameras. Later will come support for Canon's Rebel XSi, Nikon's D60, and Sony's Alpha A700, he added.

• Optical zoom to become a standard feature of 5-megapixel camera handsets - Digitimes predicts better optical zoom coming to cell phones. My reaction: eyes rolling. Who needs more megapixels and zoom when the camera already suffers a microscopic sensor, cheesy plastic lens covered with pocket lint, and scratches from car keys?
• Nova Scotia News: thoughts on a Photoshopped Christmas photo - A plea to avoid overprocessed family portraits. "Inevitably, the holiday portraits I most admire prove to be the homemade kind, squints and grins and crooked greenery included."
• Lightroom Journal: Debugging printing on Leopard with Lightroom 1.3.1 - Why printing in Lightroom broke on Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard: it switched from older Tioga print system to newer CUPS. Bottom line: upgrade your drivers. Too bad some CUPS drivers aren't yet available.
• The optical triangle--an illusion - An interesting real-world optical illusion: a bright patch reflected on the sea makes it look like there's a corresponding dark patch immediately above it.
• Canon Camera Museum - An archive of Canon camera products, plus some videos and history.

(Credit: VMware)

VMware released version 1.1 of its Fusion virtualization software to run Windows on Intel-based Apple computers Monday--along with an offer for free versions of the software to some bloggers.

"I have convinced the powers at VMware central that there's big-time value in having a strong, open conversational relationship with the blogosphere," Peter Kazanjy, senior product marketing manager for VMware's Mac products, said in an e-mail sent to bloggers and seen by CNET News.com.

"I'm...offering an open NFR (not for resale) policy for people who are honest-to-goodness bloggers." There's "no obligation to blog about VMware Fusion, but if you do, please go ahead and send a link back to us to vmware.com/mac," he added. Unlike the free 30-evaluation version VMware also offers, the NFR version doesn't expire.

The offer was sent to fewer than 60 bloggers, a VMware representative said, and Kazanjy apparently didn't want to extend it to the entire blogosphere. "Feel free to let your blog friends know, but do me a favor and don't blog this offer," he said in the letter.

Fusion is playing catch-up with SWsoft's Parallels, which entered the market first. But VMware, which leads the overall virtualization market, is on the attack: the company also released a beta version of a tool to import Parallels virtual machines into VMware so that Windows installations can be moved to the other virtualization foundation.

According to VMware and Kazanjy, features in Fusion 1.1 include "robust" support for Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"; upgraded but still experimental support for DirectX 9.0 3D graphics; support for Boot Camp partitions as virtual machines; improvements to the "Unity" feature that lets Windows applications occupy a window unencumbered by menu bars and other Windows operating system elements; the ability to synchronize iPhone with Microsoft Outlook running in Windows; and performance improvements.

Fusion costs $80, but the upgrade is free.

VMware Server 2 beta, too
On Tuesday, VMware announced an open beta of VMware Server 2.0, its free server virtualization product known years ago as GSX Server. Unlike the premium ESX Server, VMware Server runs on a host operating system, Linux or Windows.

The new version should be generally available in 2008, VMware said.

New features include:

• Support for VMI, "paravirtualization" technology that lets Linux run much faster.

• Support for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 beta, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon", among others.

• A Web-based management interface.

• Support for up to 8GB of memory and two processors per virtual machine.

• Support for 64-bit guest operating systems, as long as the software is running on a 64-bit host.

What do you get when you cross a Firefox with a chameleon?

An open-source Web browser whose user interface is adapted to the look of the operating system it's running on. One change planned for the upcoming Firefox version 3, code-named Gran Paradiso, is this more native appearance.

"The Web browser is an incredibly central piece of the user's operating system, and we don't want the user's initial reaction to be that they have modified their computer to add some type of strange, foreign application," said Mozilla interface designer Alex Faaborg in a blog posting last week. "Mozilla's user experience team literally wants to do a better job of visually integrating with Windows than IE, and a better job of visually integrating with OS X than Safari. I don't know if we will be able to pull that off, but that's the goal."

Firefox will have different looks for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but the much broader diversity of Linux interface options makes it more challenging. Red Hat, Suse and Ubuntu all look different, just to name three popular versions, and as a further complication, each is available with the KDE and GNOME graphical interfaces.

"We still aren't sure what the best way to visually integrate with Linux is, given the number of different distributions," Faaborg said. He also referred those interested in the issue to related posts by lead Firefox engineer Mike Connor and Firefox user experience leader Mike Beltzner, who detailed some of the problems.

The Firefox native-look approach goes counter to one trend.

There was a time when user interface guidelines for operating systems were rigorously set. Buttons and menus and scroll bars had to look and behave in a certain way so computer users would know what to expect and have an easier time figuring out how to accomplish what they wanted.

But user interfaces today are exploding in diversity. Years ago, software such as media players forsook a traditional appearance in favor of an interface that looks like a car radio. Followed suit are a profusion of smaller programs called widgets and gadgets such as clocks or weather monitors. And rich Internet applications, which run in Web browsers, are designed to look the same across operating systems.

Software that's adapted for multiple operating systems always faces something of an identity crisis. Should the software look the same from one operating system to the next, providing a familiar look regardless of where it's running, or should it fit in with the local system?

Faaborg said he believes people will imprint more on what Firefox can do than on how exactly it looks.

"I personally think Firefox has in the past established its identity through interactions as opposed to the visual design of the interface itself," he said, citing for example people's recognition of the tabbed browser windows in Firefox 1.0. And users similarly might identify in Firefox 3 with a feature that lets them navigate to a Web page by typing some part of its name in the location bar, with Firefox suggesting full links based on bookmarks and previous pages visited.

"When you think about the difference between Firefox 2 and 3, or the difference between Firefox and other Web browsers, I think it is streamlined interactions like this, or one-click bookmarking, that are likely to spring to mind, as opposed to the application's unique visual style," Faaborg said.