AMD Acceleration Enhances the Creative Workflows for the Next Wave of Adobe Photoshop CC Features

SUNNYVALE, CA–(Marketwired – Jun 19, 2014) –  AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that its APUs and GPUs enable accelerated performance for powerful new creative workflow features available for Adobe® Creative Cloud™ members. The latest additions to Adobe Photoshop CC will take advantage of AMD acceleration to provide valuable creativity and productivity tools. Some of these tools include motion blur effects for the next generation of Blur Gallery, a focus selection feature that enables users to quickly select in-focus areas of an image and an enhanced image resample option that preserves fine details when upscaling images.

“The collaboration of AMD and Adobe assures creative professionals access to the performance they need to make the most of incredible new features as they become available across Adobe Creative Cloud,” said Steve Belt, corporate vice president, Strategic Alliances & Platform Enablement, AMD. “AMD acceleration connects the fantastic creative and productivity enhancements in Adobe Photoshop CC to the compute performance required for an effortless user experience.”

Today also marks the availability of numerous creative and workflow enhancements to Adobe Creative Cloud video apps that were revealed in April at NAB 2014. These include high performance “debayering” for RED™ camera R3D media files, expanded support for CinemaDNG formats, new masking features and a new time-saving master clip capability. AMD App Acceleration takes advantage of the open standard OpenCL™ API to maximize performance and enable superior experiences with Adobe Photoshop CC for users with AMD FirePro™ Professional Graphics, AMD Radeon™ Graphics, and AMD A-Series APUs in their systems. This acceleration is also available across the suite of Adobe Creative Cloud video apps including Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC, Adobe SpeedGrade® CC, Adobe Media Encoder CC and Adobe Prelude® CC.

“Performance is just the starting point for understanding what AMD acceleration brings to the latest wave of Adobe Photoshop CC features,” said Maria Yap, senior director of product management, Photoshop at Adobe. “The huge benefit that arises when Adobe and AMD work together is the fantastic user experience. Together we ensure that powerful tools respond quickly to support unrestricted creativity. Those benefits can be seen every day in the inspiring work of our Creative Cloud members everywhere.”

Among the new accelerated features available for Adobe Photoshop CC are:

1) An expanded palette of AMD accelerated blur effects including Path Blur. Path Blur creates motion along a user-drawn path, enabling the user, for example, to simulate the type of look that occurs when the camera is in a moving vehicle or when an object is in motion. The user can control the shape, amount and even taper of the blur as well as add strobe motion effects. AMD acceleration enables instant response to changes made with the tool with smooth, live preview for undisrupted workflow.

2) Focus Mask is a new selection/masking feature that speeds up workflow by automatically selecting the clearest, in-focus areas of an image. After the automatic selection, the user can quickly refine and modify the selection area with sliders and brushes for complete control. This is a fantastic time-saver, helping eliminate much of the manual work previously required to select the subject or background of a photo for enhancement. AMD App Acceleration provides a highly responsive interface that speeds processing of the user selection and reacts quickly to every change to provide the visual feedback users need.

3) AMD accelerated image resampling preserves the integrity of details in an image when upscaling to higher resolutions through the Image Size dialog in Photoshop CC. This feature takes full advantage of multiple AMD GPUs to further speed the upscale processing of complex images while maintaining great levels of detail.

In addition, more than a dozen new features are now available in the Adobe Creative Cloud video tools that all take advantage of OpenCL™ acceleration through the Mercury Playback Engine that leverages the power of AMD graphics technology. These include the AMD GPU-accelerated feathering masks tool and the new Master Clip Effect tool workflow enhancement. Full details of these and other new AMD accelerated video features are available here. As part of AMD’s ongoing collaboration with Adobe around video production solutions, AMD is pleased to be sponsoring the upcoming Adobe Premiere Pro World Conference, July 11-13 at Adobe headquarters in San Jose, Calif.

Supporting Resources

• Blog: Things are in Motion with New Adobe Photoshop CC Features Accelerated by AMD
• Blog: AMD APUs and GPUs Accelerate Latest Creative Tools and Productivity Enhancements for Adobe Creative Cloud Professional Video Workflows
• With Adobe Creative Cloud, a simple monthly membership gives you the complete collection of Adobe creative software products. Along with cloud storage, Creative Cloud members automatically get access to new tools and product updates as soon as they’re released.
• Learn details about AMD and Adobe
• Find more information about AMD FirePro™ Graphics
• Find more information about AMD A-Series APU

About AMD
AMD (NYSE: AMD) designs and integrates technology that powers millions of intelligent devices, including personal computers, tablets, game consoles and cloud servers that define the new era of surround computing. AMD solutions enable people everywhere to realize the full potential of their favorite devices and applications to push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information, visit www.amd.com.  

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and FirePro are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. OpenCL and the OpenCL logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. used by permission from Khronos.