Apparently 11 years was long enough.

Microsoft released Windows XP in 2001, and Adobe said today that the current CS6 version of Photoshop will be the last one to support the operating system.

"The Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP," Adobe Product Manager Tom Hogarty said in a blog post.

The reason, he said, is that modern performance-sensitive software requires modern hardware graphics interfaces that Windows XP lacks, in particular a way to tap into the power of graphics processing units (GPUs):

Leveraging advances available on newer operating systems and hardware allows us to deliver significantly better performance, and focus our innovation efforts around the areas of the greatest benefit to our customers.

Photoshop CS6 already demonstrates that relying on a modern operating system, graphics cards/GPUs and graphics drivers can lead to substantial improvements in 3D, Blur Gallery and Lighting Effect features not available to Windows XP customers. The team hopes that by providing this information early it will help you understand our current decisions around operating system support and where we we're headed with future releases of Photoshop. We encourage all customers ... [Read more]