With this latest release Adobe appears to be promoting the adoption and support of the latest OS X 10.7 and Windows 7 operating systems. Additionally, the only reason it is still supporting Windows XP is that a large Photoshop user base still exists on the platform. However, even though Adobe is supporting older 32-bit code on Windows XP, Adobe is splitting the Windows system requirements by dropping official support for Windows Vista.Īdobe's reasoning for these changes is that quite simply it is following Apple's lead in no longer supporting 32-bit code either in hardware or software. The drop in support for 32-bit systems accompanies a requirement for systems to be running OS X 10.6.8 or later. In addition, any 32-bit plug-ins and other compatibility options for the program will no longer work, and will require updating to run properly with the software.

This means that even though the Windows version will run on older Core Duo processors that were available in the first Intel-based Mac systems, the OS X version will not. While these options are available for Windows systems, on Mac OS X Adobe is dropping 32-bit support altogether, and is opting to only make 64-bit code available to Mac users. To make the most of these features, Adobe built them using 64-bit code optimized for multicore systems, which therefore means the suite will run best on a fully 64-bit native Intel and AMD systems (all of which are multicore) however, Adobe is making Photoshop CS6 availabe in 32-bit versions for Windows XP machines, though some features will be limited on these systems.

While past versions of Adobe's products have offered a decent spectrum of support for existing operating system and computing environments, new features and development directions in the program suite have had Adobe making some adjustments to the platforms that will support the new software.Īdobe Photoshop CS6 puts a major effort toward performance enhancements, primarily with the implementation of the new Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, but in addition offering optimized and new 3D handling, quantitative analysis, and video manipulation options to the program suite. Last Wednesday Adobe announced the availability of the public beta for the Photoshop component of its upcoming Creative Suite 6 image manipulation and design software, which users can try before the suite is officially released later this year.

Adobe photoshop cs6 system requirements