Adobe to bring Retina support to Photoshop CS6 and more

Adobe has finally elaborated and expanded upon their previous pledge of bringing Photoshop to the Retina MacBook Pro "this year", bringing the target date down to a more proximate "this fall". And what's more, it won't just be Photoshop CS6 that's getting the Retina -- or more generically, HiDPI -- support.

In the first of two announcements, Tom Hogarty posted on the Photoshop blog.

The Photoshop and Lightroom teams are pleased to announce we will provide support for HiDPI displays in the coming months, including the Retina Display available on the new MacBook Pro. Supporting this new technology requires significant work by our product teams and we’re committed to provided a free update to all Photoshop CS6 customers this Fall and Lightroom 4 as soon as the work is complete. Please note that Creative Cloud members will receive Photoshop updates more frequently and receive this update in advance of updates for non-members. While Photoshop, Photoshop Touch and Lightroom will be joining Adobe Ideas in their support of HiDPI Retina Displays, Photoshop Elements will not fully support HiDPI displays in the immediate future however the team is investigating the effort required to support these new displays.

And Maria Yep adds more to the mix in Creative Layer:

We expect to update the following products with HiDPI support, free to all CS6 and Creative Cloud customers, over the next few months:

  • Dreamweaver
  • Edge Animate
  • Illustrator
  • Lightroom
  • Photoshop
  • Photoshop Touch
  • Prelude
  • Adobe Premiere Pro
  • SpeedGrade

HiDPI support on Photoshop for the Retina MacBook Pro is something we discussed extensively on our Iterate round table podcast. Because Adobe uses custom interface elements, they're currently stuck @1x on the @2x Retina MacBook Pro, and as any iPhone 4S or iPad 3 or later user knows, standard resolution apps look noticeably worse on Retina displays than they do on standard displays. Photoshop perhaps worse than most.

Since a lot of early Retina MacBook Pro adopters are also tend to be designers and developers, or otherwise pixel-sensitive, Photoshop-using fussy, complainer types like yours truly, the sooner Adobe can get a Retina version of their app in our hands, the better. I'm using Creative Cloud now, and I'll be checking and rechecking until it arrives.

Hopefully Adobe's launch data gets even more specific, and more proximate, soon.