Photoshop CS6 has arrived! Discover the hottest new features. Hear what the world's best designers have to say about this new version.
Those looking for the much-heralded Deblur filter will be
disappointed: it's far too early for inclusion this time around. In
fact, those looking for big splashy show-off features in Photoshop CS6
will also be looking in vain. (Check out reviews of the other apps in Adobe CS6.)
Adobe Photoshop CS6 is largely an under-the-bonnet release, bringing a
few new tools and filters but concentrating on greater speed,
efficiency and ease of use. But the improvements are great, and this
Photoshop CS6 review will reveal all!Before we begin: security check
Before you begin, you should ensure that your copy of Photoshop CS6
is the most recent release version. A security exploit, enabling
malcicious users to compromise your system, was reported at the start of September. Simply go to Help>Updates in Photoshop CS6
and apply all updates. Users of Creative Cloud will have these updates
pushed to their system when they next connect to the service.
Acceleration in Photoshop CS6
Photoshop CS6 makes full use of your computer's Graphics Processing
Unit (GPU), which provides tremendous acceleration in many areas. So the
Liquify filter, previously a sluggish experience, is accelerated to
provide smooth, real-time smearing even with brushes up to the new
maximum limit of 15,000 pixels; the new Oil Paint feature adds a
paint-like texture, with controls that operate on the full-screen
preview in real time. Of course, all this depends on you having a fast
enough processor and graphics card; although CS6 will run on Windows
XP/Mac OS X 10.6 with just 1Gb RAM, you do need a hardware-accelerated
OpenGL graphics card to get the most out of it.
The new features
The first thing you notice about Photoshop CS6 is its new interface.
You now have the choice between four base colours, from near-black to
pale grey - so Photoshop can look more like Lightroom if you choose.
Everything has been subtly tweaked, from the hundreds of redesigned
icons (the Pen and Lasso tools now indicate their active hotspots more
clearly) to a crisper, more consistent layout.
New HUD with key info
A new Head Up Display system (HUD) in Photoshop CS6 provides key
information right at the cursor. This is context sensitive, so will show
dimensions when dragging out a marquee, angles when rotating a
selection, and so on. It also applies to the three new Blur filters,
each of which provides a different type of blur - Field, Iris and Tilt
Shift - with strength and radius controls directly on the image, rather
than just in a side panel. All three new filters are also GPU
accelerated for real-time previews.
Photoshop CS6 filters
There's just one new tool in Photoshop CS6, the Content-Aware Patch
tool, which takes the technology introduced in CS4 (Content-Aware
Scaling) and CS5 (Content-Aware Fill) and extends it to a tool that
allows us to select and move or extend objects in a scene, patching
their original location more or less seamlessly. In practice, the
results depend very much on having the right image; it's a great idea,
but doesn't always come up with the goods.
A major new filter is Adaptive Wide Angle, which allows you to
correct camera distortion simply by drawing over lines that should be
straight. A hugely powerful tool, it allows even stitched panoramas with
multiple perspectives to be corrected into a single landscape shot.
Enhanced Camera Raw
Also good for photographers is the enhanced Camera Raw dialog, which
now has more powerful versions of tools such as Clarity (there's now no
halo effect, even at maximum strength) and Defringing (the controls are
gone, replaced by a single checkbox which just does the job). For the
first time in Photoshop CS6, it's also possible to apply localised noise
reduction.
Lighting Effects filter in Photoshop CS6
The Lighting Effects filter has had a major overhaul, ditching the
previous tiny preview in favour of a full-screen, GPU-accelerated
preview that shows changes in real time. It's of particular benefit to
Mac users, for whom Lighting Effects disappeared in Adobe Photoshop CS5
unless they were running the program in sluggish 32-bit mode.
Tool enhancements
Designers will love the new Paragraph and Character Style panels in
Photoshop CS6, which allow favourite combinations to be set and adjusted
at will - as well as the fact that Shapes layers are now true vector
objects, which means you can now apply strokes inside, outside and
centred on paths, as well as being able to stroke open paths. Those
strokes can now be dotted and dashed, and can be filled with gradients.
Adobe Photoshop CS6 will now not only save in the background,
allowing you to carry on working while it's saving, but will also
auto-save a version avery few minutes so that, in the event of a crash,
you can pick up from where you left off. If you still manually revert to
a saved file, though, it will always go back to the one you
deliberately chose to save, rather than its own intermediate version.
Photoshop CS6 Crop tool
The Crop tool has been reworked so that cropping now pans the image behind the crop window. It seems a little unintuitive at first, until you rotate a crop, when it suddenly makes sense: now, the image rotates behind the window, so you can see how it will look without having to crane your neck as you did previously.
The Select Color Range tool now has an option to select skin tones -
and, within it, a separate option to select faces. In practice, it works
remarkably well: it's not perfect, and when used in conjunction with a
mask on an Adjustment Layer it will require some manual fine-tuning, but
it's a big help.
Extending Actions in Photoshop CS6
Actions, the means by which you can automate repetitive tasks, have
been extended so that they can now store brush movements as well as menu
and selection choices. This means that for the first time it's possible
to record an entire painting operation, and have it played back with a
single keystroke.
Layer tweaking
Photoshop CS6 includes a lot of small enhancements that will
generally make much life easier for those working on complex artwork.
The Layers panel now has built-in filtering, so you can choose to view
just layers set to Hard Light mode, or those containing text, or Smart
Objects, or Adjustment Layers - or just about any parameter you can
think of. It's now possible to change opacity, light mode and colour
coding on multiple layers, so if you search for all the text layers in a
document you can change them all to yellow for easy reference. The Mask
and Adjustment panels have now been combined in a new Properties panel,
which is resizable for ease of adjustment.
It's also now possible not only to use Layer Groups as the basis of
Clipping Masks, but to apply Layer Effects to an entire Group -
previously, they could be applied only to individual layers. And the
Eyedropper tool has now been tweaked so that it can sample underlying
layers as if intervening Adjustment Layers weren't there, which makes
patching and retouching very much easier.
Beyond image editing in Photoshop CS6
Users of the Regular edition of Photoshop CS6 will be delighted to
learn that movie editing capability has made the leap over from the
Extended edition. This means everyone can now edit movies right inside
the app: you can apply all the standard selection of filters and
distortions to moving images, as well as adding animated layers on top.
You'll still need to buy the Extended edition if you want to use the
3D Layer tools, which have had a major overhaul in this release. New HUD
controls allow you to extrude, revolve and twist 3D objects directly in
the middle of the artwork, as well as adding bevels and inflation.
Changing light direction is simply a matter of shift-clicking on a
shadow and dragging to where you want it. There are many more 3D
enhancements, including text and Bezier outlines on extruded shapes that
can be edited after extrusion has been applied, and the ability to
define a Ground Plane inside the Vanishing Point filter, and then use it
as the basis for snapping 3D objects and locating shadows.
Creative Cloud update
Now available as part of a Creative Cloud
subscription, Photoshop weighs in at around 670MB. Once you've signed
up for Adobe's new service, you simply download an installer app, which
keeps tabs on the apps you have on your system. And this isn't software
'in the cloud'; Adobe Photoshop CS6 is still installed on your system,
and you don't have to stay connected to the web to use the app. This
means that the initial download can take a fair bit of time, so ensure
you factor this in before you start the installation process.
We've only just started using Creative Cloud, but the option to store
your files in the cloud, quickly drag and drop images into the browser,
create colour swatches from your pics, and add the ASE swatch files to
Photoshop is already getting us excited. There's not a huge amount of
integration with Photoshop just yet, but with the option to roll out
incremental updates via the Creative Cloud service, we can't wait to see
what Adobe has in store over the coming months.
Photoshop CS6 pricing
Full £556 (ex VAT), Upgrade £159 (ex VAT), £38.11/month as part of
annual Creative Cloud subscription and £57.17/month as part of
month-by-month Creative Cloud subscription. For details on where to buy,
please visit the Adobe Store.
Photoshop CS6 system specs
For system specifications for Adobe Photoshop CS6, and other apps in Adobe CS6, please visit our Adobe system specs page.
Designer views of Photoshop CS6
We've spoken to a number of designers from across the creative
landscape - from 3D, web design, illustration and more - and asked them
to reveal their favourite new features in Photoshop CS6. Here's what
they had to say!
Reference: http://www.creativebloq.com/photo-editing/adobe-photoshop-cs6-review-1233260
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