Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 22, 2012 at 3:28 AM
I'll post the link below if you want to download the installer, but first here's a link to Russell Brown's YT vid about his 6 favorite things in Photoshop CS6.
Here's the download link for PS CS6. This Beta does have the Extended features, FYI. And you need an Adobe ID to activate it naturally.
I've been screaming for years for Photoshop to have the dark interface of Lightroom and Bridge and Premiere, and FINALLY we get it. Took long enough! Here's a huge 25mb PDF with everything CS6 will offer. Note that video support is now in the standard edition, so if you want to dabble, it's there.
I'm not sure how the upgrades will go, Adobe to my knowledge hasn't set anything in stone. But based on the Russell Brown Video, CS6 is chock full of enhancements, but not offering the huge leap the CS5 offers (which is fine with me, it'll make the recertification test a bit easier). If they won't let CS3 & CS4 owners upgrade directly then fine, at least get up to CS5 because it is the best version by miles. The noise reduction in CS5's ACR 6.X alone is worth the price of admission. I hope they allow the three-version jump though, because to get CS6 means CS5 plus those spiffy new enhancements and a dark interface. Then we can stop there, future versions will probably focus on 3D, video, organ transplants and altering time as we know it.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 22, 2012 at 3:57 AM
OK, methinks I'm going to like this new Tilt-Shift filter in CS6, lol...
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 22, 2012 at 4:09 AM
I think I'm having WAY too much fun with this goofy TS filter, lol! Yeah, my house, with 5D2 and 16-35mm mounted on a 16' painter's pole... thought this shot from last year would make a good TS test shot to get that toy look.
"future versions will probably focus on 3D, video, organ transplants and altering time as we know it."
LOL!!
After the introduction of Content Aware Fill, I can almost believe this one!
Thanks as always, Paul.
Posted by Varina Patel on March 22, 2012 at 12:09 PM
I've been working with it all morning. I'm liking it. Lots.
Gizmodo has a nice review that's worth reading if you want to know what some of the new features are... http://gizmodo.com/5895424/photoshop-cs6-is-the-best-version-in-recent-memory.
Posted by Jim Sabiston on March 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM
My usual habit was to skip an upgrade in the series and hit every other one. So, I'm on CS4 at the moment and was waiting for CS6 for my routine upgrade purchase. Does anyone know if Adobe is sticking to their guns on only permitting upgrades from CS5? I'm going top have to make a decision soon and I will be very unhappy if Adobe holds to this oppressive decision.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 22, 2012 at 1:47 PM
Hey John, isn;t is looney all that's getting added? Now we'll have a "Content Aware" Move tool, so if you get stuck in a photo next to somebody you don't like, no sweat, just roughly select yourself and move yourself to the other side of the group and let PS CS6 fill in the gap. Sweet.
Varina, I stayed up WAY too late last night with that. I wish I knew how long the Beta license will last...
Does anyone know if Adobe is sticking to their guns...
That'l be the $64K question Jim. I noticed at the bottom of the Adobe Labs site (where the Beta is posted) a few notes about PS CS6:
•Adobe ID login and online activation are required either at installation or within seven days after your first launch of the Photoshop CS6 beta. The same requirements will be in place for the shipping version of Photoshop CS6 when it is released. Your Adobe ID provides multiple benefits, including an easy way to access your serial numbers, the Adobe.com community, and the upcoming Adobe Creative Cloud™ membership.
•Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended will be part of the Adobe Creative Suite®, and Photoshop CS6 Extended will be part of Adobe Creative Cloud membership. Both Photoshop editions will also be available separately.
That says a lot... basically Adobe is forging ahead with online subcription software just like Microsoft, which is ultimately what the Creative Cloud Membership is likely to become. We already see that you can "rent" CS5 by the month which is a help to corporations, but believe me, the ultimate goal by Adobe and Microsoft is to get the planet on subscriptions and do away with the "buy and install and patch" method. I could expound on this for a month, but the bottom line is that they know that announcing online-only software licensing won't fly with a brute announcement, they have to chip away slowly until the general public "gets it". Remember having a phone for 12 bucks years ago? No way we'd spend $100 a month for a phone, EVER. Ha, now look at your last cell phone bill if you have a data plan. SO, they'll keep plugging away until it becomes accepted. Often they announce these ideas to see how it will be received, and then back off if opposition is too strong. Microsoft did that with Office 2010, it was planned to be browser-based only, and when we griped, they backed off and offered it as an option. So that may be good news for PS CS6, there's been a lot of griping about the upgrade policy changing. But it won't rest, I guarantee it. One of the obstacles is getting people to understand what "the cloud" is, and that was a struggle for a while, but no more. Enter Apple into the mix, the absolute king of branding and marketing. Now we have "iCloud" and everyone one of us goofball iPhone/iPad owners now says "hey, this is great, I can store my stuff online in iCloud and it shows up on all of my iSomethings!". Voila, the cloud is no longer a mystery. Notice that Adobe now has "the upcoming Adobe Creative Cloud™ membership"... all part of the conditioning to get us there. It'll happen faster once prices get realistic too, right now you get 2GB-5GB of free online storage from everybody doing the cloud: Apple, Amazon, Box.Net, DropBox, YouSendIt, Adobe's current Photoshop.com, you name it. Pretty soon Burger King will offer Cloud storage services (don't laugh, I was on their wifi the other day while waiting in the drive-thru line). But right now, just to jump to 50GB of storage is about a $10/month charge. Right now that's a bit much, but the day will come soon where cloud services will offer 50gb-100gb free and then you pay for higher amounts, and when that day shows up, it'l coincide with more and more people having faster internet so they can access this kookie cloud. Mix that with the eventual 4G network across America, and we'll all be cloud-savvy and say to each other "remember carrying those annoying little thumb drives around??", lol. It's all gelling, but it's important to know that this model is setting the stage for subscription software, and believe me, that even includes Windows. So I think it may be too early for Adobe to be enforcing the CS5-only upgrade, but I won't be shocked if they do. Somewhere they need to discourage shrink-wrapped upgrades if they want to get us to accept web-based-everything. If they do enforce that, just get on CS5 while you can, it's truly a big leap up from CS4, and right now it's 20% off at Adobe.com (I think).
Ov vey, how did I get going on all that?? Anyway, I just came across another pre-release "training" set by Tim Grey for PS CS6. It's 30 minutes long and it's put out by Video2Brain which has some nice and affordable training sets. That PS CS6 set can be downloaded for free here.
Posted by David Bostedo on March 22, 2012 at 10:00 PM
My usual habit was to skip an upgrade in the series and hit every other one. So, I'm on CS4 at the moment and was waiting for CS6 for my routine upgrade purchase. Does anyone know if Adobe is sticking to their guns on only permitting upgrades from CS5? I'm going top have to make a decision soon and I will be very unhappy if Adobe holds to this oppressive decision.
Yeah Jim, they are still holding to that upgrade plan. They are offering some deals in CS5.5 in the meantime if you want to go that route.
Personally, I'm hoping that they still offer an upgrade path from the current Elements to the full CS. That path is usually significantly cheaper than buying CS at full price. Elements can usually be found for under $100 and then it's $299 for the CS upgrade if you use the right link (for some reason it's not the main Adobe store link - it's THIS ONE.)
That link has been active and updated for the last 3 or 4 years, so I hope they keep that going.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 22, 2012 at 10:44 PM
Good post David, that Elements upgrade might be the ace in the hole.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 29, 2012 at 5:30 PM
YAHOO! Hey Preston, not only only is that a great review, but I just caught something I hadn't noticed yet: There's an option in the preferences to disable compression for PSD files! FINALLY! Layered PSDs take 45-50 seconds to save on my machine due to the compression Photoshop uses (we're talkin' a 6-core processor with 24gb of ram). I now save as uncompressed TIFFs in CS5 which take a blink. I was hoping Adobe would offer "no compression" for PSDs in a future version, and they did in CS6. Sweet!
That's good news, Paul! All of my PSD's are mult-ilayered, and most range in size from 900MB to about 1.5GB. Saving these monsters, even on a i5 quadcore, 16GB RAM machine with an SSD is quite slow.
Quick Note: I upgraded my C:\ drive to an Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD (Bought it from Puget Systems). I have Win 7 64 bit, my programs, and my in-process image files on it. It will open 1.2 GB PSD file in about 7--8 seconds. This thing is fast! It will be great when SSD's really come down in price--the big SSD's are really expensive. I have my archived images and other stuff on two internal 500GB WD Blue drives, and my system image is backed up on WD 1TB SATA external drive.
--P
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 29, 2012 at 11:42 PM
Great setup Preston! I'm patiently holding off but I sure am antsy for the speed increase. I forsee pulling my 300GB WD Raptor (10K RPM Drive) that is my C drive and replacing it with a 240gb SSD, but not until those are under $200. I've been on a bit of a spending spree lately and need to close the dyke for a while, lol.
That looks like a sweet box, Paul! When I was shopping around for an SSD, one reason I opted for the Intel 240GB was its significantly better read/write speed over the smaller drives in the 520 series. I also wanted extra space for my current 'work' files. Puget Systems has a nice article under Resources> Hardware Articles on their site regarding their testing of the Intel 520 SSD's. These are SATA 6GB/s drives, so the mother board needs to have support for them. The SATA 3GB/s SSD's are less expensive.
PS: I know what you mean about plugging the dike for a while!
Discussion
13 repliesHere's the download link for PS CS6. This Beta does have the Extended features, FYI. And you need an Adobe ID to activate it naturally.
I've been screaming for years for Photoshop to have the dark interface of Lightroom and Bridge and Premiere, and FINALLY we get it. Took long enough! Here's a huge 25mb PDF with everything CS6 will offer. Note that video support is now in the standard edition, so if you want to dabble, it's there.
I'm not sure how the upgrades will go, Adobe to my knowledge hasn't set anything in stone. But based on the Russell Brown Video, CS6 is chock full of enhancements, but not offering the huge leap the CS5 offers (which is fine with me, it'll make the recertification test a bit easier). If they won't let CS3 & CS4 owners upgrade directly then fine, at least get up to CS5 because it is the best version by miles. The noise reduction in CS5's ACR 6.X alone is worth the price of admission. I hope they allow the three-version jump though, because to get CS6 means CS5 plus those spiffy new enhancements and a dark interface. Then we can stop there, future versions will probably focus on 3D, video, organ transplants and altering time as we know it.
I think I need to go to bed.
After the introduction of Content Aware Fill, I can almost believe this one!
Thanks as always, Paul.
Gizmodo has a nice review that's worth reading if you want to know what some of the new features are... http://gizmodo.com/5895424/photoshop-cs6-is-the-best-version-in-recent-memory.
Varina, I stayed up WAY too late last night with that. I wish I knew how long the Beta license will last...
That'l be the $64K question Jim. I noticed at the bottom of the Adobe Labs site (where the Beta is posted) a few notes about PS CS6:
That says a lot... basically Adobe is forging ahead with online subcription software just like Microsoft, which is ultimately what the Creative Cloud Membership is likely to become. We already see that you can "rent" CS5 by the month which is a help to corporations, but believe me, the ultimate goal by Adobe and Microsoft is to get the planet on subscriptions and do away with the "buy and install and patch" method. I could expound on this for a month, but the bottom line is that they know that announcing online-only software licensing won't fly with a brute announcement, they have to chip away slowly until the general public "gets it". Remember having a phone for 12 bucks years ago? No way we'd spend $100 a month for a phone, EVER. Ha, now look at your last cell phone bill if you have a data plan. SO, they'll keep plugging away until it becomes accepted. Often they announce these ideas to see how it will be received, and then back off if opposition is too strong. Microsoft did that with Office 2010, it was planned to be browser-based only, and when we griped, they backed off and offered it as an option. So that may be good news for PS CS6, there's been a lot of griping about the upgrade policy changing. But it won't rest, I guarantee it. One of the obstacles is getting people to understand what "the cloud" is, and that was a struggle for a while, but no more. Enter Apple into the mix, the absolute king of branding and marketing. Now we have "iCloud" and everyone one of us goofball iPhone/iPad owners now says "hey, this is great, I can store my stuff online in iCloud and it shows up on all of my iSomethings!". Voila, the cloud is no longer a mystery. Notice that Adobe now has "the upcoming Adobe Creative Cloud™ membership"... all part of the conditioning to get us there. It'll happen faster once prices get realistic too, right now you get 2GB-5GB of free online storage from everybody doing the cloud: Apple, Amazon, Box.Net, DropBox, YouSendIt, Adobe's current Photoshop.com, you name it. Pretty soon Burger King will offer Cloud storage services (don't laugh, I was on their wifi the other day while waiting in the drive-thru line). But right now, just to jump to 50GB of storage is about a $10/month charge. Right now that's a bit much, but the day will come soon where cloud services will offer 50gb-100gb free and then you pay for higher amounts, and when that day shows up, it'l coincide with more and more people having faster internet so they can access this kookie cloud. Mix that with the eventual 4G network across America, and we'll all be cloud-savvy and say to each other "remember carrying those annoying little thumb drives around??", lol. It's all gelling, but it's important to know that this model is setting the stage for subscription software, and believe me, that even includes Windows. So I think it may be too early for Adobe to be enforcing the CS5-only upgrade, but I won't be shocked if they do. Somewhere they need to discourage shrink-wrapped upgrades if they want to get us to accept web-based-everything. If they do enforce that, just get on CS5 while you can, it's truly a big leap up from CS4, and right now it's 20% off at Adobe.com (I think).
Ov vey, how did I get going on all that?? Anyway, I just came across another pre-release "training" set by Tim Grey for PS CS6. It's 30 minutes long and it's put out by Video2Brain which has some nice and affordable training sets. That PS CS6 set can be downloaded for free here.
Yeah Jim, they are still holding to that upgrade plan. They are offering some deals in CS5.5 in the meantime if you want to go that route.
Personally, I'm hoping that they still offer an upgrade path from the current Elements to the full CS. That path is usually significantly cheaper than buying CS at full price. Elements can usually be found for under $100 and then it's $299 for the CS upgrade if you use the right link (for some reason it's not the main Adobe store link - it's THIS ONE.)
That link has been active and updated for the last 3 or 4 years, so I hope they keep that going.
Here is an article at dpReview about the features of CS6 that are of interest to photographers.
dpReview Artcle
--P
Quick Note: I upgraded my C:\ drive to an Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD (Bought it from Puget Systems). I have Win 7 64 bit, my programs, and my in-process image files on it. It will open 1.2 GB PSD file in about 7--8 seconds. This thing is fast! It will be great when SSD's really come down in price--the big SSD's are really expensive. I have my archived images and other stuff on two internal 500GB WD Blue drives, and my system image is backed up on WD 1TB SATA external drive.
--P
PS: I know what you mean about plugging the dike for a while!
--P