Yesterday, Adobe announced the latest version of its Creative Suite, the software package which includes Photoshop. Yes, it's software, but we know a lot of our readers are photographers, both amateur and pro, and the update also takes advantage of some Mac specific hardware, which is definitely Gadget Lab territory.

I have been using the Photoshop CS4 beta for a few months now, and it flies. It even runs well on my little Hackintosh (although some of the filters render slowly). The big Mac-specific feature is support for the multi touch pads found on the MacBooks Air and Pro. You can pinch to zoom in and out, twist the image and also "throw" the picture across the screen: if you hold the space bar down, click and drag the image when it is zoomed in and then let go, the picture will continue to move before slowing and coming to rest. It's very similar to the scrolling on the iPhone.

Another hardware features is not just for the Mac. Photoshop now uses GPU acceleration, moving processor intensive operations off to the graphics card. Because these cards are made to process lots of data in parallel (all at the same time), the performance boost is quite surprising. One more thing which will keep Mac-heads happy: Command-tilde finally switches between open windows, just like all other Mac applications. It's a small change, but it takes care of a big frustration.

For more in depth look at the new software, take a look at the coverage from our sister blog, Monkey Bites.

First Look: Photoshop Creative Suite 4 Is Faster, More Refined [Monkey Bites]