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Author Topic: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops  (Read 8845 times)

RobSaecker

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new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« on: January 24, 2014, 03:13:35 pm »

Update for Pixelmator today adds this:

Quote
Fully optimized for the new Mac Pro, Pixelmator 3.1 Marble leverages the full power of the dual workstation-class GPUs built into it. Both graphics cards are used simultaneously to accelerate composition rendering and compute demanding tasks. This means that image editing is now completely seamless, and even with large and complex compositions you will experience profoundly faster and more responsive performance.

If Pixelmator can do that, others can’t be far behind.
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Rob
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kaelaria

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2014, 04:23:44 pm »

Oooooooooh wow.  So running that filter will take 0.3 seconds instead of 0.6.  LOL

Sorry but GPU functions for photo editing - FLUFF.
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RobSaecker

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2014, 09:48:35 pm »

I guess I should have made my point in posting this more clear: Pixelmator is not a large software developer. If they can get this incorporated into their app in such short order, larger companies with more demanding apps should be able to do likewise.

OTOH, maybe you're right. Maybe no one will ever need more than 640KB of RAM.  :)
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Rob
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westfreeman

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2014, 07:43:15 pm »

I also find it great that Pixelmator is updated so quickly.  !!
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kaelaria

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #4 on: January 29, 2014, 03:11:33 am »

You don't get it - it's just marketing BS.  Why don't you email them and get clarification on EXACTLY what "composition rendering and compute demanding tasks" means.  Do you realize what functions are GPU accelerated at all in PS? 

Let's list them, from Adobe:

GPU-enhanced features added in Photoshop CS6
Adaptive Wide Angle Filter
Liquify
Oil Paint Filter
Warp and Puppet Warp
Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt/Shift
Lighting Effects Gallery

New 3D enhancements:
Draggable Shadows
Ground plane reflections
Roughness
On-canvas user interface controls
Ground plane
Light widgets on edge of canvas
IBL (image-based light) controller

GPU features added in previous versions Photoshop
Scrubby Zoom
Heads Up Display (HUD) color picker
Color sampling ring
Brush dynamic resize and hardness control
Bristle Brush tip previews
Rule of thirds crop grid overlay
Zoom enhancements
Animated transitions for one-stop zoom
Flick-panning
Rotate the canvas
View nonsquare pixel images
Pixel grid
Adobe Color Engine (ACE)
Draw Brush tip cursors

Adobe Bridge GPU features
Preview panel
Full-screen preview
Review mode


NOW...take a look at that list and figure out how man of those features require ANY wait time, such as the Oil Painting Filter (I'm betting a tiny fraction of photographers ever use it anyway).  Yeah, hardly any.  And of them, how many do photographers use?  Even less.  Most that have ANY wait time are for video and 3D rendering.

All the others?  They are simply functions - they are on or off.  It makes ZERO difference if you have one GPU or 1000, it still works.  For example Flick Zoom.  If you have GPU support, you can flick your image around.  Adding more GPU power changes absolutely nothing about the feature.  Same goes for 95% of the list.

So get it?  Who cares if they get dual triple quad, etc. support working.  Right now there's no need because there's nothing to use it with.  Most of the wait time using PS is storage/bus/ram related - not GPU or even CPU bottlenecked.
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kers

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #5 on: January 29, 2014, 04:36:12 am »

You don't get it - it's just marketing BS.  ......
....right now there's no need because there's nothing to use it with.  Most of the wait time using PS is storage/bus/ram related - not GPU or even CPU bottlenecked....

I agree a bit late but Photoshop CC just added GPU-support for Smart Sharpening and is now about 300-400% faster- must say it is the only feature that attracts me towards CC at the moment...
But this shows that if the GPU is used in the software it would really make a difference. I agree i do not use oilpaint very much...:-)
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Pieter Kers
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #6 on: January 29, 2014, 09:38:23 am »


So get it?  Who cares if they get dual triple quad, etc. support working.  Right now there's no need because there's nothing to use it with.  Most of the wait time using PS is storage/bus/ram related - not GPU or even CPU bottlenecked.
+1 big time.  From all the tests that I've seen the Mac Pro offers some incremental improvements relative to previous Macs (but I've seen few comparisons to PC builds) but this is 98% for video and 3D rendering.  Even in the cases that photo users have the improvements are not noticeable at all.  If you like the Mac Pro you can buy it with confidence that it will perform quite well.  If you like a good fast PC you can buy/build it with confidence that will perform quite well.  The choice is yours, the differences are minor if there at all.
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george2787

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2014, 09:57:41 am »

Let's wait and cross fingers to see if they allow GPU acceleration for open/save actions that are still a pain in the @$$ for everything bigger than 1GB in every computer I've used.

After seeing the speed boost in C1 with previews and exporting and openCL I'm an optimist and if adobe did that life will be easier... mid range CPU, big GPU that usually improves faster and is easier to upgrade.  :)
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RobSaecker

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #8 on: January 29, 2014, 11:46:39 am »

You don't get it ...

Oh, I do get it. You don’t think software engineers will ever be able to figure out something useful to do with all that extra processing power, despite the decades of experience we’ve had to the contrary.
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Rob
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Farmer

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #9 on: January 29, 2014, 03:26:23 pm »

It's not a question of whether they can, it's a question of how much benefit versus how much cost.  Yes, the GPU is a super computer and that's useful (frankly, reminds me of the old Math Co-Processor days) but typically to more and more marginal degrees once the core functionality is enhanced.

To be honest, the best improvement you can make on the GPU side is more memory.  More memory means more images can be opened and use the GPU enhancements, which is handy if you process a lot of images (or quite a few REALLY big ones).
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Phil Brown

kaelaria

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #10 on: January 29, 2014, 06:18:51 pm »

Now *I* get it - this is like trying to reason with a very small child.  Some people are just so technically illiterate there's no point in even answering let alone discussing things like this with them.

Let me put it in possibly at least, simple enough terms for some...

When you have a car that spins it's tires when you try and accelerate, adding more horsepower doesn't help the situation.  Better tires do. 

Making stupid statements like "You don’t think software engineers will ever be able to figure out something useful to do with all that extra (processing) power" just shows your true ignorance as to how things work with a computer.

Good luck! :)
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RobSaecker

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2014, 07:25:25 pm »

Now *I* get it - this is like trying to reason with a very small child.  Some people are just so technically illiterate there's no point in even answering let alone discussing things like this with them.

So you resort to childish insults. How grown up of you.
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Rob
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jerryrock

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #12 on: January 29, 2014, 07:32:18 pm »


What's new in Adobe Photoshop CC 14.2:

January 16th, 2014
Includes many new features, including Perspective Warp for manipulating multiple perspectives in an image, and linked Smart Objects for easier reuse of design elements. We are also delighted to deliver support for 3D printing in Photoshop CC. Now you can design, edit and print in 3D using the world’s best imaging tool.

JDI Features/Enhancements:
Mercury Graphics Engine performance boost (Smart Sharpen on GPU)
Enhanced Scripted Patterns and Fills (Trees, previews, and other improvements)
Added a “do not show again” checkbox to the missing fonts dialog
Enabled Share on Behance for more languages
Improved history states for editing text, editing and applying Character and Paragraph styles
Generator can export padding in image assets by using layer masks
Layer names can now be up to 255 characters
Generator now properly rescales Illustrator Smart Objects when exported at 200%
New option for Narrow Options Bar, for small displays
On a background layer, one click on the lock icon unlocks the layer
Set custom background color in New Document dialog
Better negative number support in curves adjustments
See recent colors in the Swatches panel
Change “Clear” to “Clear All” for the Color Sampler tool
Increase number of color samplers from 4 to 10
Change all color samplers in Info palette at the same time
Improved font transformations
Improved selection of shapes with white arrow tool (clicking in the middle reveals white knots)

Mac Pro Compatibility:
The Photoshop CC 14.2 update provides GPU compatibility support for the new Apple Mac Pro. The 14.2 update will allow Photoshop to take full advantage of one of the two available GPUs at a time.
We expect to add support for both of the new Apple Mac Pro’s GPUs, and continue to optimize our customers experience by supporting additional GPU operations in a future release.
Each of the two GPUs in the base model of Mac Pro are faster than the GPUs available in any other Mac model, and provide plenty of speed and VRAM (memory on the GPU card) for most operations. If you spend a great deal of time editing very large images using one of the GPU-accelerated Photoshop features such as Blur Gallery, Liquify, or 3D, we expect this gain to be significant. (The 6GB VRAM in the highest end GPU option would only be needed for the largest 3D models).
For additional guidance on hardware, OS and Photoshop configuration see this document on Tuning Photoshop for Peak Performance.
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Gerald J Skrocki

Jim Pascoe

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #13 on: January 30, 2014, 05:14:29 am »

Now *I* get it - this is like trying to reason with a very small child.  Some people are just so technically illiterate there's no point in even answering let alone discussing things like this with them.

Let me put it in possibly at least, simple enough terms for some...

When you have a car that spins it's tires when you try and accelerate, adding more horsepower doesn't help the situation.  Better tires do. 

Making stupid statements like "You don’t think software engineers will ever be able to figure out something useful to do with all that extra (processing) power" just shows your true ignorance as to how things work with a computer.

Good luck! :)

Perhaps the OP doesn't have the advanced understanding of computing that you evidently have, but I would have thought there are less rude ways of showing your superior knowledge in answer to his post.  Or is there some previous history between you that I have missed?

I think I'm extremely ignorant of the workings of computers so would be very wary of asking your advice on anything, just in case my stupidity was rammed down my throat.....

I do think I can understand the bit about engine power and tyres, but not sure where the tyres would fit into my Mac Pro. ;D

Jim
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Farmer

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #14 on: January 30, 2014, 04:19:49 pm »

Would wheels make it a Mac Go Pro?
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Phil Brown

BernardLanguillier

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #15 on: February 01, 2014, 08:09:46 pm »

There are clearly many compute intensive/currently poorly optimized imaging applications. Those include:
- some forms of noise reduction (dxo Prime comes to mind),
- large pano processing,
- DoF stacking,
- Some advanced image processing (Silver eFex,...).

I know because those operations take much too long to complete for my liking.

Few of these are performed in PS, but I am certain most of them would benefit from GPUs' computational power.

So the expectation from the OP that more software companies should speed up the porting of some parts of their code to OpenCL/CUDA is a very sensible one IMHO.

Cheers,
Bernard

kaelaria

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #16 on: February 01, 2014, 09:56:40 pm »

You didn't comprehend the discussion very well.  Sure it would be GREAT if more functions were GPU accelerated such as those.  But they aren't.  This thread is about the fact that only one GPU is used vs multiple.  That's it.  Apples and Oranges discussions.
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RobSaecker

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #17 on: February 01, 2014, 10:15:01 pm »

Interesting. At the beginning of the discussion you said this:

Sorry but GPU functions for photo editing - FLUFF.

But now you say this:

Sure it would be GREAT if more functions were GPU accelerated such as those.  But they aren't.  This thread is about the fact that only one GPU is used vs multiple.  That's it.  Apples and Oranges discussions.

So which is it, GPU acceleration is FLUFF, or it would be GREAT if there was more GPU acceleration?
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Rob
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kaelaria

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #18 on: February 01, 2014, 10:25:22 pm »

The lack of comprehension in this thread is astounding.  It's both, both are correct!  GPU functions ARE fluff!  As easily seen in the lists above - that's all we get!  AND, yes it would be great if more were available - but they aren't.  THEN, it wouldn't be fluff!  Here's yer sign...
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utahmike

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Re: new Mac Pro; one shoe drops
« Reply #19 on: February 02, 2014, 01:54:59 pm »

It would be great to see Adobe embrace GPUs more in the future. GPU processing could be really nice for image composition of non-destructive edit layers. For my larger images, LR can at times get pretty jerky when there are a lot of local edits and spots removed. I've never had this issue with Photoshop, however, so I would imagine there's a lot Adobe could do to improve image composing without using the GPU.

Never the less, leveraging GPUs would make the whole LR edit experience more fluid and relaxing, IMHO. Let's hope they jump on it!
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Michael Clark - Salt Lake City
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