Microsoft and Adobe Collaborate to Make Photoshop Up to 20% Faster on Windows

Microsoft and Adobe have collaborated to improve the performance of Photoshop on Windows, achieving significant speed increases in several key operations for professional creative work. Thanks to a series of optimizations made to the Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) compiler, the image editing software recorded a performance increase of up to 20% on x64 Windows systems and 13% on Arm-based devices.

Despite the growing prevalence of generative artificial intelligence services, Photoshop continues to be one of the most widely used tools in the creative sector. For this reason, Microsoft has decided to focus on enhancing the performance of the application, developed in C++ and compiled on Windows using the MSVC compiler.

The initiative focused on real-world scenarios involving operations that are particularly CPU-intensive. Although many graphic processing tasks are now performed or accelerated by the GPU, some latency-sensitive activities continue to rely heavily on CPU power. These include brush responsiveness, stroke processing, and file opening.

Microsoft and Adobe Work to Improve Photoshop

Microsoft engineers initially enabled the MSVC "peak-performance" compilation mode, designed to generate highly optimized executables. They then experimented with the use of Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO), a technique that uses data collected during the execution of .exe and .dll files to improve performance based on actual usage patterns.

However, PGO proved to be poorly suited to Photoshop's development flow due to increased complexity introduced into the compilation process. For this reason, the team adopted Sample-based Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO), a technology that leverages samples of hardware performance collected directly from distributed versions of the software.

According to Microsoft, SPGO ensured greater flexibility and better integration with Adobe's development environment. By combining this technology with the peak-performance mode, the two teams achieved tangible improvements in drawing operations, file opening times, and filter application.

John Fitzgerald, senior developer at Adobe, emphasized that greater responsiveness in these activities is crucial to enable professionals to work in a smooth and iterative manner.