Two years on since the last major revision of Photoshop and adobe has finely released a beta of its upcoming Photoshop CS6 product and with it brings 65 new features, based on user feedback.
Among the changes, the most striking are the introduction of a new black UI, real-time enhancements of certain effects for live-preview, content-aware moving of objects, new Camera Raw plug-in algorithms, extended video editing features, auto recovery and individual layer search.
Without further adieu, here's the full list of new features:
| Brushes | HUD brush resize and hardness can now change opacity |
| Increase brush size to 5000px | |
| Change color dynamics to per stroke instead of per tip (user option for old behavior) | |
| Brightness/contrast slider for textures when painting | |
| Brush projection for static tips | |
| Brush cursor reflects brush dynamics for round and captured tips | |
| Eyedropper |
Show the sample size popup for the various eyedropper tools (black point, white point, etc.) |
| Add ignore adjustment layers options bar item for the eyedropper | |
| New mode for eyedropper to select layers current and below | |
| File formats | Read common stereo image pair formats (JPS, PNS) Allow for more bit depths in TIFF files |
| Read BIGTIFF format | |
| Give the user choices regarding how they want transparency treated in OpenEXR on file open | |
| Grammar | Policed throughout app |
| Use consistent grammar style in the title of dialog windows (no commands such as "Choose a color:") | |
| Layers | Add a contextual menu item that deletes a layer effect not just disables it |
| Add dither options to Layer Styles for Gradient Overlay and Gradient Stroke | |
| Allow 00 or Shift 00 to work when setting layer/fill opacity (previously no way to get 0%) | |
| Add bicubic sharper & bicubic smoother options when free transforming layers | |
| Allow changing of blend modes for multiple layers at once | |
| Allow locking of multiple layers | |
| CMD+J to duplicate layers and layer group | |
| Allow changing color labels to multiple layers at once | |
| Layer tooltips to include layer name (if defined) | |
| Opt+click on toggle arrows (groups and effects) in layer panel should close all targets | |
| Show blend if/Blending Effects badge on layer | |
| Show correct opacity and blend mode values for hidden layers | |
| Tab goes to next layer on inline layer rename, SHIFT + TAB goes to previous | |
| New command to raster layer effect into layer, merging the selected layers into themselves | |
| Reorder effects in the layers palette to match the Z-order style/blend mode (bottom most effects in termsof blending order, drop shadow is below the other effects | |
| Liquify | Resize Liquify brush with shortcuts |
| Increase maximum Liquify brush size Add option to load last mesh | |
| Presets | Add new document presets for common devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad, etc.) |
| Add new Gradient Map presets for toning and split-toning | |
| Sticky reorganization of tool presets (changes persist after re-launch) Add Contact Sheet II as an Automation option | |
| SDK | Add the ability to return an array of guides in a document from the scripting SDK |
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Add ability to access tool name associated with the tool preset name via scripting Selections |
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| Make the marquee, lasso, and mask panel feather values support decimal places like the feather dialog | |
| Remember feather radius when showing dialog for selection from a path | |
| Transform | Improve dragging of vector curves |
| Don't hide smart object icon when transforming a layer | |
| Rotate 90 with even x odd pixel dimension to be smooth | |
| Undo or disable auto -rotate on open | |
| UI | Remove the app bar and reduce the drag/app bar over 30% |
| [Windows] New/open document to context click on a document tab (has always been on Mac, now Windows too) | |
| Add "Don't show again" checkbox to Purge warnings | |
| Miscellaneous | Enable Split Channels for documents with layers |
| Select Hex field by default and allow clipboard pastes with # in contents (i.e. #fffffff) | |
| Increased GPU stability by prequalifying GPUs on the fly before use | |
| Auto-select the best resample method based on the type of resize | |
| Enable Invert and Threshold adjustments for masks in 32 -bit | |
| Hold SHIFT during startup to disable 3rd party plugins | |
| Add warning message that 16 -bit images cannot display their file size in the Save as JPEG dialog | |
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Add command to insert "lorem ipsum" for type |
It seems as though Adobe hasn't just been sat twiddling its thumbs these past years and has done a good job in further refining the Photoshop experience, readers can download the beta here.
