Adobe Releases Photoshop CS6 Public Beta

Hot on the heels of its Lightroom 4.0 launch, Adobe has released the first public beta of Photoshop CS6. As expected, there are many features coming to CS6, though only a few are documented by Adobe at this time. “Content-Aware Patch” seems to be the most talked-about, a major update to Content-Aware first introduced in CS4. In CS6, you can draw around an area that you’d like to move, move it, and then have Content-Aware perform the change and fill in the blanks.

“Blur Gallery” is another notable addition, and one that photographers might consider to be a “must-have”. It consists of three new blur tools; Field Blur, Iris Blur and Tilt-Shift. With these, you can perfect the amount of blur your image has, where it’s located, where it dissipates and of course, alter its angle. If you have an image where attention should be drawn to one particular area, these blur tools should make that job a lot easier.

Used a fisheye lens and regret it? That’s where “Adaptive Wide Angle” comes in. With this tool, Photoshop will be able to detect the kind of lens used and its aperture value, and then utilize a profile based on that. To help straighten out lines, you can use a line tool that will automatically curve itself based on lens values. In essence, this tool could allow you to turn an image taken with a fisheye lens into one that looks like it was captured with a regular lens. Perhaps in time we’ll see an automated feature that will recognize the lens value and allow you to choose another lens value to apply?

The crop tool has also seen a major rework. Now when it’s selected, the contextual menu up top offers unique options for it, like most of the other tools. Also, when a crop is drawn into an image, the focal point remains the center of the crop. So as you adjust the crop or rotate it, the image rotates with it, giving you a better idea of how it’s going to look once applied. This is a simpler update but a nice one nonetheless.

One of the best features of Photoshop is its Camera Raw feature, and with CS6, we’ll be introduced to Camera Raw 7.0. This time around, greater flexibility is given thanks in part to “Highlights” and “Shadows” dials being added. In the event of a really over-exposed photo, these options could save the day.

The last mentioned feature is an odd one: video editing. Picture a lightweight Premiere Pro… that’s the only way I can seem to sum it up. Years ago when Photoshop gained 3D support, I found that a little strange, and now I feel the exact same way about video editing. Of course, I still can’t come to grips with video being captured with a DSLR, so it could be that this feature will be hugely appreciated by PS fans the world over.

For a run-down of the above-mentioned features, you can check out a video by Adobe’s enthusiastic Sr. Creative Director Russell Brown over at YouTube. To grab the beta yourself to try, hit up the link below.