Under the hood, the Mercury Graphics Engine was the unsung hero. It leveraged the power of the graphics card to provide near-instant results when using Liquify, Warp, and Transform tools. For users coming from CS5, the speed boost in 13.0.13 was immediately noticeable and drastically improved workflow fluidity.

The Mercury Graphics Engine utilized the NVIDIA CUDA and OpenCL frameworks to offload pixel manipulation from the CPU. This architectural shift yielded two primary results:

The "Extended" designation indicates it includes the full suite of standard Photoshop CS6 tools plus specialized features for high-end professional industries:

It is an original work of software engineering not because it invented the algorithm for everything, but because it was the last time that algorithm was given to the user without a leash.

Can CS6 still be installed on a new computer? - Adobe Community

From a software archaeology perspective, version 13.0.13 is distinct because it represents a .