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Jqqerry
Jqqerry
Inspiring
September 22, 2022
Question

Does anyone know "Native Canvas"?

  • September 22, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 905 views

As i know about native canvas,

which is

rendered using OS-native APIs, i.e. Metal on Mac, DirectX on Windows.

Disabling it means reverting to the old OpenGL APIs.

And I know the goal of that is because Apple and Microsoft no longer support OpenGL.

 

What I'm curious about is that there may be a bug in the process of converting and migrating code like this.

 

However, even if delays occur or become slower, we suggest disabling native canvas in the current Adobe.

 

So is there any benefit of using native api? I wonder if code conversion is forced because it is no longer supported, or if there is an advantage of speed or error compared to OpenGL.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 22, 2022

Someone from engineering should answer this, but the advantages of "native canvas" (Metal / DirectX) are simply that they are developed and supported going forward, while OpenGL isn't. The old OpenGL functions still work, but it's probably just a matter of time before they don't. The official word is that OpenGL is "not supported" in MacOS, "deprecated" in Windows.

 

I found an old post by Mark Dahm (Adobe staff) that sums it up like this:

"The transition to a 'native canvas' is a long process, and as we discover compatibility issues, we'll keep that other option aroud. We are seeing newer cards also fall out of GPU mode and this option might be helpful for a bit, so keep it handy and let us know for which issues it works. Our goal will be to remove it once the native canvas is working well across all customer systems."

 

I think he explained in even greater detail somewhere else, but I can't find it at the moment.

 

    Jqqerry
    JqqerryAuthor
    Inspiring
    September 22, 2022

    Thanks for very kind reply.

    What's clear is that thry're making a difference for a reason, and we're always grateful for Adobe's work.

     

    The reason why I posted was that I could understand what most of the technology previews test. But I didn't know anything about coding, and when I saw a lot of delays reported at the turn of the year, I wondered if I could use all the speed completely when this was done, or if the native api itself was a bit slower or heavier than openGL. Anyway, thank you for your answer!

    PECourtejoie
    Community Expert
    PECourtejoieCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 22, 2022

    Also, the benefits might be shown better going forward with newer GPUs, I think users of M1 processors experience a very speedy Photoshop, that feels as fast with 8GB of RAM as older systems with 16GB. And the Apple architecture is made for Metal performance. What I wonder is if nVidia and AMD are pushing a lot behind DirectX, they both have their own technologies, Vulkan and CUDA...

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