Photoshop CS4 to Favor Vista for 64-Bit

For graphic design professionals it's that time again. Adobe is readying a new version of its Creative Suite, the software bundle that includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and other applications for print and Web design. Only this time there's a twist: The new version of Photoshop will support 64-bit memory addressing for the first time -- but only if you're running Windows.

Simply put, more bits means you can access more memory, which means you can work with bigger files. By taking advantage of 64-bit CPUs, Adobe is making it possible for designers and photo manipulators to work with really, really big images at high resolutions. Think posters, advertising displays, or even billboards.

So why not on Macs? As it turns out, Photoshop for Mac OS is written using older APIs that don't allow access to all the latest Mac OS X features. To bring the software up to speed will require a total rewrite, a time-consuming process that could leave Mac users in the cold for some time.

It won't be the first time that Mac-based graphic designers have looked to Adobe with unease. Illustrator 7, released in 1997, was the first version of Adobe's drawing software that offered the same feature set on both Mac OS and Windows. Given Apple's troubles at the time -- Gil Amelio was still CEO, and Apple had wasted untold millions on repeated, failed attempts to reinvent its aging OS -- many in the graphic arts community wondered openly whether the PC port of Illustrator 7 signaled a wholesale move to Windows as Adobe's platform of choice.

It didn't, of course, and in hindsight the idea sounds a little crazy. Designers like their Macs, period. Adobe would be nuts to shoot itself in the foot by abandoning the platform, no matter how fragile Apple's market position appeared to be.

But stranger things have happened. Look at QuarkXPress. Despite being the leading software for print layout professionals -- another almost exclusively Mac-based market -- it took Quark three years to release a version that supported Mac OS X. Fed up with Quark's foot-dragging, many design shops jumped ship to Adobe InDesign (and others are still transitioning).

Designers had an alternative to Illustrator 7, too: Macromedia Freehand. It wasn't as popular, but it existed. And that's the thing; there really is no professional alternative to Photoshop.

Will the extra power of Photoshop CS4 for Windows cause designers to jump ship? It seems unlikely. Only a very tiny segment of Photoshop users works with files big enough to warrant 64-bit capability -- and designers still like their Macs.

But then again, I can't help but be stricken by how much today's Windows platform gives graphic designers an experience comparable to that on the Mac. It really is almost the same on either system -- so does platform allegiance still matter in the design world? Or, at the end of the day, is getting the work done what matters most? Sound off in the PC World Community Comments.