Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe Photoshop CS6 beta is available as a free download from Adobe Labs. The beta provides a preview of what’s to come in the full version, with customers asked to download the beta, try out the experience and provide feedback to the product team. The final release is expected in the first half of 2012.
New Features in Photoshop CS6 Beta
Adobe believes that Photoshop CS6 beta demonstrates its focus on “huge performance enhancements, imaging magic and creativity tools that offer customers a new experience in digital imaging.”
Key features include new additions to the Content-Aware tools: Content-Aware Patch allows greater control by letting users select and duplicate an area of an image to fill in or “patch” another. Content-Aware Move lets users select and magically move an object to a new place in the image.
The package is powered by the new Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, enabling near-instant results from popular editing tools including Liquify, Puppet Warp, Transform and Lighting Effects; and a refined, modern interface featuring dark UI options to make images pop.
Adobe stated that the new and re-engineered design tools make creating designs faster and more efficient. Vector layers allow users to apply dashed lines and gradient strokes, searchable layers help quickly zero in on any layer you need, and new type styles let designers quickly apply type treatments to their designs.
In addition, the Photoshop CS6 beta offers all the features of Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended, such as new 3D editing features and quantitative imaging analysis capabilities. These features will be included in the shipping version of Photoshop CS6 Extended when it becomes available.
“Photoshop CS6 will be a milestone release that pushes the boundaries of imaging innovation with incredible speed and performance,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. “We couldn’t wait to share this beta of Photoshop CS6 with our customers and are looking forward to hearing from them and seeing the ways they are incorporating the beta into their daily creative workflows.”
A screenshot from the Photoshop CS6 beta
Pricing and Availability
The Photoshop CS6 beta is available immediately as a free download in English and Japanese. At installation, users will be required to provide an Adobe ID to complete a one-time login and online product activation.
In related news,
Adobe has launched the latest version of its image editing and cataloguing software, Lightroom 4, complete with a significant (50%) price cut.
