Perhaps the most powerful computer program of all time for graphics is set to obliterate any chance the competition previously had. Adobe’s CS4 not only boasts the World’s most complete and baffling set of tools for creating damn near ANYTHING you can imagine, but it will also employ the thinking power of your GPU instead of just your CPU.

A little history. Way more than ten years ago, I was first introduced to Adobe Photoshop in its infancy at version 2.1 Colleges already preferred it over Corel Draw and other Corel image manipulation tools. Shortly after mastering 2.1 (which was actually possible back then), 3.0 came out introducing the Magic Wand which pretty much destroyed the competition. Photoshop 4.0 was the first and only program I asked my parents to buy for me. The $700 price tag (1996 code named the Big Electric Cat) ensured that I basically only got that and some socks for Christmas.

I migrated to 5.5 and later, 6.0 thinking there was absolutely nothing that could be improved upon. The interface had remained mostly the same in the seven years I’d used it but there was something I didn’t know: Adobe Photoshop only used the Central Processing Unit (CPU) to perform its graphic magic.

In a recent article discussing the pros and cons of the CPU vs. the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU on the video card), the fashion in which the two processors calculate and solve video and graphic problems is vastly different. Naturally, the CPU is a jack-of-all trades. The GPU is a specialist in solving computations for video games and rendering XYZ space. While a GPU could never compete with a CPU in the areas of running an operating system or managing a shared network, the GPU can wipe the floor with the CPU at image render time. And only NOW Adobe is utilizing the GPU? I had no idea.

CS4 (Creative Suite 4 – code named Stonehenge) is the equivalent to Photoshop version 11. I seriously doubt that there is a single person alive today who knows every last bit of functionality. The Adobe program is so vast and widely able that the instructions for each little detail could have filled encyclopaedic volumes at version 7. Simply, in the talk about Cloud Computing and desktops that are eternally online and delivering interactive Internet content (widgets, feeds, atom, etc.), I seriously believe that one could create an entire experience right out of the CS4 box.

It’s a benchmark for Adobe, a milestone in computing history and couldn’t have come at a more perfect time: Cloud Computing, Flash (now owned wholy by Adobe) everywhere you look, Internet desktop, enhanced graphical user interfaces (GUI’s) galore and TONS of other progressions that have placed Adobe squarely in the middle of the road to hit we Internet and computer travelers right in the face. Every single video you watch online is powered by a Flash movie player and every document you edit collaboritively is powered by Flash technology. Even online video editing (a new and promising trend) is powered by Flash functionality and command line Photoshop (perhaps ImageMagick too).

Windows 7 is alleged to be omitting image manipulation. Google is said to have reverse engineered Windows for its own reasons. And a score of other developments lead me to believe the following:

Adobe will be the next major breakthrough in Operating Systems. Not just CS4, that’s just a tool to buy and use. But I think that somehow, Adobe will work with open source to provide access to computing functions we have come to expect.