Adobe PS6 Beta
The Adobe Photoshop 6 Beta popped up last week, and its an important upgrade. I know - some upgrades are more important that others, and like always, this one depends on your needs. But if you are doing any real work with image manipulation you are going to want this one for the content-aware tools. Content Aware Fill was one of the best new features to come along in a long time and we’ve enjoyed it for some time now. With PS6, Adobe is building of that and putting more tools into play that are huge timesavers.
As usual, there are a ton of reviews available online, including these from MacWorld, c|net, and Digital Photography Review.
The first thing you’ll notice is that the UI has adopted the charcoal background that you see in many other Adobe apps. Looks like that trend will continue despite the usability studies that indicate the limited contrast of white text on dark backgrounds. I’m not trying to sound like an grumpy old man - I’m just saying we know that black text on a white background provides the most contrast and makes everything more readable. You can however adjust these levels of darkness which should help - but it means you’ll need to do the work to customize your workspace. But I guess the old interface was black on light grey, so the contrast wasn’t amazing anyway. I think we just get picky with tools we use daily…
But in terms of features, the most interesting elements for me (and my students) are the Content Aware Move and the Content Aware Patch tools. These work surprisingly well and make manipulations much faster. For students, this means they will be able to do things that all but the most dedicated would have avoided in the past due to time constraints. The crop tool is improved, and I think should help students that struggle with modifying images while confusing image size with resolution. I’m not sure yet - I’ll have to try it in the classroom. But this has been an ongoing conceptual problem for students working with digital imagery, so any advance is a help there. There are updates to the Camera Raw interface for improving images, and that will also be a welcome advance for my classes, since we use that all the time.
There are a number of features that will mean little to most users (video functionality, some new filters, etc.) but most of the additions are really helpful. I’m particularly pleased to see the return of text styles - I don’t want to switch to Illustrator just to do some character work. Also, there is a skin-tone masking ability that should make selections easier, but I struggled to make the tool work effectively. That could be user error though, so I’ll need to practice.
Overall, the big wins here are the content-aware tools. From an education perspective, you’ll be able to get student to do more, with less time involvement, which will likely increase motivation and decrease frustration. For my courses, this will be a “must have” upgrade. You can download the beta from Adobe Labs.