Pixel Bender Filters

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

I`ve just downloaded the Pixel Bender filters for Photoshop CS4 from Adobe Labs. The speed of those filters is really incredible (GPU accelerated)!
But the filters itself :(
Most of them are pretty much useless in my opinion. I hope we will get more usefull filters like a simple gaussian blur or unsharp mask or smart sharpen. Of course we already have those filters in Photoshop, but not at that speed. Pixel Bender is really realtime!

[PECour...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the info.
Yes, having a PB version of all filters where it might apply, with improvements (Wind in all directions, Radial Blur with preview...) would be the best... but I don't even imagine the worktime for this to become a reality.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

I just found out, that Pixel Bender filters only work up to a specific image pixel count. In my case up to 4096*4096 pixels. If the image is larger (and the pictures of my 50D are larger) I can`t use the filters anymore and get an error message: The image dimension exceed the hardware capabilities of your GPU. I guess that`s because of the max. texture size of my graphics card of 4096 pixels.
I have a Geforce 8600GT/512MB. Now my question is, wether there are cards that can handle bigger texture sizes.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

I have installed OpenGL extensions viewer and it reports 8192x8192 as max. texture size. According to what I found in the internet that`s the max. texture size of the whole G80 series. So I`m wondering why I can`t use Pixel Bender on larger photos than 4096 pixels.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Hey guys, is nobody interested in Pixel Bender?
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbender/>
Tell me what graphics card you have and what the max. image size is that you can use with Pixel Bender.
Any comment from Chris or Adam would be appreciated as well.

[David_E_...@adobeforums.com]

I am interested in Pixel Blender.

However, it does not mention my Vista 64 bit system. The site reads XP SP2 and above but unless it reads Vista 64 bit I am not biting. Vista gets very cranky over having certified drivers.

[Anthon...@adobeforums.com]

However, it does not mention my Vista 64 bit system. The site reads XP
SP2 and above but unless it reads Vista 64 bit I am not biting. Vista
gets very cranky over having certified drivers.

It does on this page...

<http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/pixelbender.html>

Anthony

[David_E_...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the link,
I did not dig deep enough

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Any ideas anyone, why I can`t use Pixel Bender for images larger than 4096*4096 pixels? As mentioned before the max.texture size of my card is 8192*8192 pixels and it has 512MB.

[Robert_...@adobeforums.com]

I don't know why you are asking this here. You should be talking about this
in the pixel bender forum on the Adobe Labs site.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/categories.cfm?forumid=72&catid=661&entercat=y

Robert

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Robert, I`m asking this here (and I already have in the Pixel Bender forum) because it has to do with Photoshop and because if you take a look at the Pixel Bender forum there are almost no replies to any of the threads over there.

[John Joslin]

Surprise, surprise! The infamous cold fusion forums!

[Robert_...@adobeforums.com]

And, I suspect very few here messing with Pixel Bender. And, certainly no
one here "officially" that can know the answer to your question. That is the
problem with beta you can't contact Adobe support. Good luck.

Robert

[alex...@adobeforums.com]

I have Vista64 and CS4 premium. I used the Adobe Extension manager CS4 to install the Pixel Bender plugin in Photoshop CS4.But despite a message that I will find the Pixel Bender in the filter menu it is not visible in the filter menu ???

Any Idea?

Thanks,

Alex

[BJNicholls]

I'm running a new Vista Ultimate x64, Core i7 system with 12GB of memory and an Nvidia Geforce GTX 280 card with 1GB onboard memory.

If I try to run Pixel Bender on a 12 megapixel 8 bit image from my DSLR, I get a message saying there's not enough onboard graphic card memory. If I resample the image from 4288 pixels wide to 4000, the filter is happy. I'm not sure where the actual limit is between the two image sizes and I'm not inclined to spend the time necessary to home in on a hard number.

Pixel Bender filters are for the most part silly and useless, but I think this is a good metric for what users of GPU-enabled filers and Photoshop CS5 will need to look for in a graphics adapter. I'm figuring now that 2GB of onboard GPU memory is a base configuration for working with images with contemporary DSLR resolution. The new Geforce 295 card has a little under that and it's the least expensive card with that much memory (about $500). But Geforce cards are gaming cards and the drivers are always pushing performance, not reliability. So we're probably going to have to look at workstation class cards that are much more expensive. But the drivers for workstation cards are generally more solid in keeping with a professional market needing reliability over sheer rendering performance. We certainly will if we want to run GPU accelerated filters on large image files and need a card with more than a couple of GB onboard. I wonder if Adobe developers bought shares in AMD (ATI) and Nvidia. The Nvidia Quadro CX card that's "designed for Adobe CS4" is upwards of $1600 and has 1.5GB of onboard memory. That's looking like a baseline card for a lot of Photoshop users.

Plan ahead and open your wallet wide...

[BJNicholls]

Alex, did you install the filter into the 32 or 64 bit version of Photoshop? Perhaps you've installed in one but you're launching the other. The Extension Manager won't let me install both filter versions, so you'll only see the filter in the version you've installed for.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

BJ,
according to the guys that programmed Pixel Bender, the filters are limited to about 4000x4000 pixels. It has nothing to do with your card. New cards(since Geforce8)could handle about 8000x8000 pixels.
The developer said, that in some cases there were problems, so they limited the max. image size.

[BJNicholls]

Thanks, Stephan,

I wonder how much onboard memory new cards need to handle 8000x8000. It looks like the Technote on GPUs and OpenGL has been revised. I don't see the information that I recall earlier about what features work with various amounts of onboard GPU memory. There are more specifics in the FAQ at the bottom of the technote:

<http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404898>

These are the FAQ's that seem most relevant to spec'ing a card:

> Q. How much video RAM can Photoshop take advantage of?
A. Photoshop is limited by OpenGL itself on the amount of video RAM it
can access. Photoshop can access approximately 500-700 MB of video RAM.
3D, a separate feature from OpenGL, allocates its own GPU resources, and
can use as much video RAM as is on the display card. If you load a large
3D volumeric texture, for example, it might use a considerable amount
of RAM (such as 1 GB) by itself, leaving less than expected for the rest
of Photoshop.
<<

So if I'm working with a 3D layer in PS CS4 extended, it sounds like 1.7GB of memory would cover Photoshop's maximum memory utilization and the adapter's 3D rendering overhead.

> Q. How much RAM do I need on my display card to run faster in Photoshop
CS4?
A. For basic OpenGL functionality, you should have at least 128 MB of
RAM on your display card. If you're running Windows XP in general, OpenGL
will work best if you have 256 MB RAM on your display card. Most Photoshop
work will run faster with between 256 - 512 MB of display RAM. If you
do a lot of 3D work, you use Panoramas or large images, or you need to
have multiple applications open at the same time that use the GPU, you
might benefit by having 512 MB or more RAM on the display card.
<<

As I recall, the earlier version of this technote spelled out in more detail what "basic" OpenGL functionality means — one image window without too much resolution in my experience.

The specific mention of XP suggests it needs more memory for OpenGL functionality. Vista virtualizes the graphics adapter and XP doesn't. I've yet to see anything but vague "it works better on Vista" from Adobe tech on what the GPU performance difference is between the two platforms.

> Q. Does Photoshop take advantage of dual-GPU display cards?
A. Not at this time.
<<

SLI and Crossfire aren't utilized by Photoshop.

I guess I'll stand pat with the GTX 280 card. I wonder if running Aero features uses GPU memory.