Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta Previews New Features

Adobe is previewing the upcoming Photoshop CS6 photo editing software with a free beta now available to download. In a first move for Adobe, the free beta unveils a fully redesigned interface and brings fun tools such as iris blur and tilt shift, before the final version goes on sale this year for $700 for new users or from $200 for users who upgrade.

The Photoshop CS6 beta is available to download for both PCs and Macs, and you do not need a serial number to install and use it: just select “Try. I want to try Adobe Photoshop CS6 for a limited time” in the welcome screen when you start the installation process.

[RELATED: First Look: Photoshop CS6 Beta Is Dark, Swift, and Content Aware]

Adobe said the final release will have 60 percent more new features than CS5, along with some 65 user-requested features such as a Paste Lorem Ipsum option to fill up text blocks. The first thing you will notice, however, is the new user interface that is much darker (you can revert the light gray), but most of your favorite tools should be in the same place as before.

One of the cool new features in Photoshop CS6, which Adobe demoed last month, is the content aware move and patch tool. This allows you to select and duplicate an area of an image to fill in a different area within the same photo, or select and move an object to a new place in the image, while the background is filled automatically behind the moved object.

Those using a lot of layers in the Photoshop files will appreciate the ability to search through layers by color, name or mode. Those who take videos with their cameras can also do same basic editing right within Photoshop CS6. The options include color and exposure adjustments, layers, as well as borders, textures, filters and audio tracks.

A long overdue feature for Photoshop finally arrives in CS6 as well: background saving, so you don’t have to manually save every time you make a change to the file. Meanwhile, features made popular by mobile photo apps, such as tilt shift and iris blur, are now available as built-in effects from the Filters menu.

You can explore the free Photoshop CS6 beta from Adobe’s downloads page.

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