KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark – V1(4)

Allan 'Zardon' Campbell May 3, 2010 Announcements, Featured Announcement, Tech News

Get the Benchmark for yourself over here

The KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark V1 (4) comprises the following tests:

1. Texturiser Test (1)
A canvas filter with scaling set to 112 and relief 10. Light direction, bottom without invert texture.

2. CMYK Colour Conversion
Important for all the professionals as this 4 plate (cyan, magenta, yellow and black (k-key colour)) colour mode is used in graphics bureaus and printing presses for colour reproduction to newsprint or magazine. Digital photographs will be converted to this mode for final output.

3. RGB Colour Conversion
Important test for web designers as this colour mode is used for webpages and will be the mode of choice for digital images raw from the camera.

4. Ink Outlines
A relatively demanding test which applies a brush stroke filter to the image. Stroke Length: 6. Dark Intensity: 20. Light Intensity: 11.

5. Dust and Stratches
A filter which is used quite widely by professionals scanning less than perfect original flat copy. Radius is set to 3 and Threshold is set to 36.

6. Watercolor
An artistic filter to create a realistic watercolor image. Brush Detail 11. Shadow Intensity: 3. Texture: 1

7. Texturiser Test (2)
A canvas filter follow up to the first with a variation of settings. Scaling: 67. Relief 9. Light Direction, top right with invert texture applied.

8. Stained Glass
A very intensive filter which seen recent optimisations in CS2/3 and again in CS5. Cell size: 6. Border Thickness: 3 and Light Intensity: 4.

9. Mosiac Tiles
Makes use of memory bandwidth. Tile size 5. Grout Width: 2 and lighten Grout 9

10. Extrude
One of the most intensive filters and a test of CPU core efficiency and memory bandwidth – the latest Core I7 processors put in a great set of results with this filter algorithm. Size: 12. Depth: 6. Without solid front faces. Without mask incomplete blocks. Type: Blocks

11. Rough Pastels
A test which gives the image a canvas texture like appearance and tests CPU. Effect: Rough Pastels. Stroke Length: 12. Stroke Detail: 7. Texture Type: Canvas. Scaling: 129. Relief: 29. Light Direction: Bottom. With Invert Texture.

12. Smart Blur
A very intensive filter which puts an emphasis on overall system FSB, Cpu and Memory performance. If you are lucky enough to own a Core i7 CPU, this annihilates all contenders. Radius: 20.7. Threshold: 28.7. Quality high and mode normal.

13. Underpainting
Brush size 2, Texture coverage 23. Texture type: Canvas. Scaling 100, Relief 6. Light Direction top with invert texture.

14. Mosiac Tiles
Makes use of memory bandwidth. Tile size 5. Grouth Width: 2. and Lighten Grout 9

15. Spherize
A useful filter which is used to create many interest effects on objects. Amount 100, Mode: Normal

16. Palette Knife
Stroke size 23, Stroke Detail 3 and softness 0

17. Sponge
Brush size 2. Definition 12 and Smoothness 5

18. Smudge Stick
Stroke Length 4. Highlight Area 7. Intensity 9.

As seen from the test suite, there is a good cross section of intensive, real world filters which stress any modern system. Unfortunately CS5 filters have not been coded to take full advantage of 4 or 8 core systems. Therefore much of the performance benefits will relate to core efficiency and clock speed. In fact many of the results can be improved by increasing system FSB, ram speeds or tightening the timings. I had hoped that Adobe might adopt a new way of thinking with CS5, however they have basically just repeated the CPU structure they used in CS4. If you have a sexy Nehalem 16 core system then most of your cores will sit idle throughout, which is quite disappointing. Adobe need to allow users to toggle how many cores they want Photoshop to use, but I feel my cries are falling on deaf ears.

Here are some results from testing on several systems:

Macintosh MacBook Pro 17 inch Rev 5.2. 2.93ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 9600GT M, 8 GB of DDR3 memory and SSD Drive. (lower scores are obviously better). Snow Leopard 10.6.3 (64 bit Kernel enabled).

1: Texturiser (1) – CS5 2.7 seconds / CS4 3.1 seconds
2: CMYK – CS5 10.3 seconds / CS4 10.4 seconds
3: RGB – CS5 10.4 seconds / CS4 10.9 seconds
4: Ink Outlines – CS5 45.8 seconds / CS4 53.4 seconds
5: Dust and Stratches CS5 7.3 seconds / CS4 7.9 seconds
6: Watercolor CS5 28.7 seconds / CS4 33.6 seconds
7: Texturiser CS5 2.2 seconds / CS4 3.8 seconds
8: Stained Glass CS5 30.9 seconds / CS4 39.5 seconds
9: Mosiac Tiles CS5 18.8 seconds / CS4 32.6 seconds
10: Extrude CS5 319.3 seconds / CS4 348.2 seconds
11: Rough Pastels CS5 16.3 seconds / CS4 32.1 seconds
12: Smart Blur CS5 163.4 seconds / CS4 252.0 seconds
13: Underpainting CS5 40.6 seconds / CS4 72.6 seconds
14: Mosiac Tiles CS5 23.2 seconds / CS4 31.1 seconds
15: Spherize CS5 5.3seconds / CS4 5.7 seconds
16: Palette Knife CS5 52.7 seconds / CS4 53.5 seconds
17: Sponge CS5 46.2 seconds / CS4 47.8 seconds
18: Smudge Stick CS5 12.4 seconds / CS4 15.3 seconds
Total CS5 836.65 seconds / CS4 1053.1 seconds

Intel Core 920 watercooled @ 4ghz. 6GB 1600mhz Corsair DDR3 1T, 1TB 500GBx2 HD's. Nvidia 285 GTX. Windows 7 64 bit – 64 bit EXE's.

1: Texturiser (1) – CS5 1.8 seconds / CS4 1.9 seconds
2: CMYK – CS5 1.7 seconds / CS4 1.9 seconds
3: RGB – CS5 1.6 seconds / CS4 1.6 seconds
4: Ink Outlines – CS5 29.9 seconds / CS4 31.9 seconds
5: Dust and Stratches CS5 2.8 seconds / CS4 4.1 seconds
6: Watercolor CS5 26.7 seconds / CS4 28.8 seconds
7: Texturiser CS5 1.8 seconds / CS4 2.1 seconds
8: Stained Glass CS5 23.3 seconds / CS4 25.7 seconds
9: Mosiac Tiles CS5 13.5 seconds / CS4 15.1 seconds
10: Extrude CS5 151.9 seconds / CS4 153.3 seconds
11: Rough Pastels CS5 12.2 seconds / CS4 14.1 seconds
12: Smart Blur CS5 95.6 seconds / CS4 102.2 seconds
13: Underpainting CS5 35.4 seconds / CS4 41.3 seconds
14: Mosiac Tiles CS5 13.7 seconds / CS4 15.8 seconds
15: Spherize CS5 2.6 seconds / CS4 3.3 seconds
16: Palette Knife CS5 22.7 seconds / CS4 22.9 seconds
17: Sponge CS5 40.2 seconds / CS4 43.8 seconds
18: Smudge Stick CS5 12.4 seconds / CS4 15.3 seconds

Total CS5 486.9 seconds / CS4 525.1 seconds

The results indicate that the move to 64 bit Cocoa on Macintosh OSx reaps huge rewards as would be expected and that the move to CS5 on Windows gives increases, but with figures more in line with an updated version rather than anything revolutionary. The Core i7 in the Windows 7 system certainly shows the older range of processors a clean pair of heels and I hope to rerun these tests shortly on a new Core i7 Macintosh system.

Please feel free to discuss this and share your findings on our forums, your results and interest in this will help us to document and improve the script in the future.

UPDATE: We are working on a database system so people can enter and compare results, check back later.