The next version of Photoshop (CS 4) will be juicing up performance by taking advantage of hardware it hasn’t tapped before: graphics cards and physics processors. How much faster is the new 64-bit, GPU-injected Photoshop? At a demo at Nvidia’s HQ, TG Daily watched “the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image care about it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied nearly instantly.” Update: John Nack from Adobe is calling bogus on some of TGDaily’s info, namely the Oct. release date and states the demoed tech isn’t “promised to go into any particular version of Photoshop.” So take it for what you will.

3D effects are spiffier too, with direct 3D model manipulation and rendering, as well as a snappier 3D accelerated panorama. Overall, it sounds enjoy it could be the most important Photoshop update in years when it drops in October. [TGDaily]