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"For most people, with a 12-megapixel SLR file or doing Web design work, the difference they'll see is pretty negligible. The inflection point from 32-bit to 64-bit really happens where you would have run out of memory and would have had to go to your virtual memory system," storing data on thehard drive rather than in memory, Nack said. "There's a tenfold performance increase opening up a large file."

A companion product geared specifically for photographers, Photoshop Lightroom, has 64-bit support for both Mac and Windows, but Adobe couldn't do the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4 for Mac OS X because it was busy moving to a new underlying programming foundation from Apple, called Cocoa.

Photoshop, meet Macromedia

Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia gave the company access to the Flash technology for animation and scripting, and Photoshop CS4 now employs it in the plumbing. In the past, it was tough for third-party software developers to add new features to Photoshop, but built-in Flash 10 software means Photoshop will accommodate control panels from third parties.

"Now you can drop a SWF (Shockwave Flash file) into your Photoshop folder and extend the application," Nack said. "This is going to be a huge shot in the arm for people developing on top of the application."

Adobe plans to release a Configurator application to help people create their own panels, part of the company's effort to make a Photoshop that can be better tailored to specific tasks. That software currently is scheduled to arrive sometime around the end of October, Nack said.