Currently I am using 32 bit CS4 since my version of Vista is 32 bit and nearly all of my plugins (except FM's VelviaVision) work fine.
IF I do a fresh install of 64 bit Win7 and install CS4 (it installs both 32 and 64 bit versions as I understand it), does that mean that none of my 32 bit plugins will work in the 64 bit version of CS4? (It is unlikely that most of the 32 bit plugins will be recoded into 64 bit versions.)
I am weighing the advantages of moving to 64 bit Win7 from my 32 bit Vista that is rock solid -- thus my question about being able to use 32 bit plugins in 64 bit CS4.
Most vendors of Photoshop plugins are working to recode them to work in 64 bit Photoshop, as 64 bit computing is clearly the future. For example, Imagenomic has already re-coded their plugins to work in 64 bit, as a free upgrade.
Nik has just announced a new version of Vivesa to be released next month, but it will cost $99 USD for the upgrade.
The big advantage of using 64 bit operating systems is, of course, the ability to use more than 3.25 GB of memory. Thus, even if you're only able to use 3.25 GB RAM in 32 bit PS, your computing experience in general will be enhanced due to the speed increases realized by the OS being able to use more memory and to allocate it as needed to keep multiple open programs running efficiently.
I have just upgraded from 32-bit XP to 64-bit Windows 7. As mentioned, most plug-ins are moving to 64-bit, and I've found a couple of them already work fine in 64-bit.
The major annoyance for me is that my video cards (I use three separate cards for three monitors) that worked well in XP aren't cutting it handling large images in Windows 7. I'm having to upgrade my video from 256 mb cards to 512 mb cards.
