Photoshop CS6 is ready for download, in beta

[Capt.Jack Sparrow]

Photoshop CS6 Beta is available to download

Note: You do not need a serial number to install and use the beta. Simply select "Try. I want to try Adobe Photoshop CS6 for a limited time." in the Welcome Screen when you start the installation process.

Photoshop CS6 Highlights

• Content-Aware Patch — Patch images with greater control using the newest member of the Content-Aware family of technologies. Choose the sample area you want to use to create your patch, and then watch Content-Aware Patch magically blend pixels for a stunning result.
• Blazingly fast performance and a modern UI — Experience unprecedented performance with the Mercury Graphics Engine, which gives you near-instant results when you edit with key tools such as Liquify, Puppet Warp, and Crop.* Plus, a refined, fresh, and elegant Photoshop interface features dark background options that make your images pop.
• New and re-engineered design tools — Create superior designs fast. Get consistent formatting with type styles, create and apply custom strokes and dashed lines to shapes, quickly search layers, and much more.

Download Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta - Adobe Labs

 

[mickey megabyte]

you'll need an (freely available) Adobe ID to install it, and it will expire once the full version is released - rumoured to be late spring 2012.

still worth having a look at though!

 

[GeneO]

I am looking forward to the improved content aware. Glad to see it is getting closer to upgrade time I will wait for the production though.

 

[JoeDavola]

Just tried it out, huge upgrade over CS5.

 

[dsperber]

I'm downloading it right now.

Not three weeks ago I'd upgraded from my CS3 license to CS5, and now CS6 is announced. I just "chatted" with Adobe, to see if they had a "special offer" for users who'd say purchased CS5 within the past 60 days and now wanted to further upgrade to CS6 when released... say for $10-$20 instead of requiring yet another normal full upgrade price. They had no knowledge at this time of any such potential offers.

So I decided to request a refund of my 3-week old upgrade to CS5, and I'm now downloading the CS6 beta which I will use until it's officially released. Then I will purchase the real upgrade from CS3 -> CS6 which I assume will be the same $199 minus some special "promotional" discount if you buy it within 30 days of its announcement or something like that. They might even mail out a promotional offer leading up to the CS6 release for an even better deal.

Anyway, my refund for CS5 is now in progress. And CS6 beta will instead be on my machine within the hour.

 

[JoeDavola]

I'm downloading it right now.

Not three weeks ago I'd upgraded from my CS3 license to CS5, and now CS6 is announced. I just "chatted" with Adobe, to see if they had a "special offer" for users who'd say purchased CS5 within the past 60 days and now wanted to further upgrade to CS6 when released... say for $10-$20 instead of requiring yet another normal full upgrade price. They had no knowledge at this time of any such potential offers.

So I decided to request a refund of my 3-week old upgrade to CS5, and I'm now downloading the CS6 beta which I will use until it's officially released. Then I will purchase the real upgrade from CS3 -> CS6 which I assume will be the same $199 minus some special "promotional" discount if you buy it within 30 days of its announcement or something like that. They might even mail out a promotional offer leading up to the CS6 release for an even better deal.

Anyway, my refund for CS5 is now in progress. And CS6 beta will instead be on my machine within the hour.

You need to chat with somebody else, because they offer free upgrades if you buy a product after a new one is announced. I have a friend who got a free upgrade for after effects that way.

Upgrade policy after product announcement

 

[dsperber]

You need to chat with somebody else, because they offer free upgrades if you buy a product after a new one is announced. I have a friend who got a free upgrade for after effects that way.

Upgrade policy after product announcement

No... you've got it backwards. I bought CS5 three weeks ago, before CS6 was "announced".

However my point is that I wouldn't have bought CS5 if I knew CS6 was right around the corner and even already in a public beta state.

I was looking for essentially a "free secondary upgrade" from CS5 to CS6 if you'd purchased CS5 within 30-60 days of the CS6 announcement.

Anyway, they apparently don't have such a policy. So I simply requested a full refund for my 3-week old CS5 purchase. I'll simply use the money to buy a CS6 upgrade when the product is official in a few months.

Looks like the pricing for upgrades goes back 3 versions (e.g. upgrade price for CS5 requires that you have CS2, CS3 or CS4), so I'm guessing the upgrade price for CS6 when I do buy it in a few months will be the same $199 as it was for CS5 upgrade 3 weeks ago and will require that you have CS3 (which I do), CS4 or CS5.

 

[JoeDavola]

That's good you are getting a refund, my buddy did buy after effects right before the new version was announced, but he was able to get a free upgrade after a few chat sessions. He just tried a few times and kept going higher up the chain of people until they offered him a free upgrade.

Version 6 is the only full version I have, been doing upgrades since then and make sure not to skip more than 2 versions.

 

[dsperber]

Version 6 is the only full version I have, been doing upgrades since then and make sure not to skip more than 2 versions.

I have a long history with Photoshop as well.

Got a full license for Photoshop v3.0 included with my purchase of a high-end Microtek scanner back in 1995 while running Win95. Kept purchasing upgrades through v6.0, which continued to utilize the v3.0 license key. Wasn't a very secure "activation" method, and didn't even prevent installation and use on multiple machines.

I continued to use v6.0 for a long time, until 2007 when I decided to buy CS3 (version 10.0). Very good price from an Amazon seller (upgrade version license key, and was also provided with the needed CS2 full license key).

And now I'll go with CS6 (version 13.0, new license key), which beta is now installed and will be purchased as an upgrade from CS3. That will give me CS3 on one machine and CS6 on a second machine, which is what I want.

Incidentally, the Adobe guy said his refund procedure had checked and determined that my CS5 license key was still "active". He couldn't initiate the refund until I first "deactivated" the software on that machine, which I then did. Now he could put through the refund. Obviously Adobe has perfected the now server-based licensing/activation method to ensure product use to 1-machine as it clearly always was intended.


Incidentally, that old original Microtek scanner from 1995 finally got replaced also in 2007 along with Photoshop. I don't even think they exist any longer (certainly my high-end model was discontinued), and WinXP drivers were developed and supported by some independent German guy. Or, maybe Microtek got into the low-end business.

I went with a terrific Epson Perfection 4990 Pro scanner instead, which has given me wonderful results and which is fully supported for Win7 by Epson at the driver level. Again, great price from an Amazon seller. It came bundled with v5.0 "scanner application software" named Silverfast Ai, from a German software company named LaserSoft. This seems to be a premiere company and product, supporting many many scanners from many many vendors.

I've kept current with Silverfast, upgrading from v5.0 to v6.0, and most recently to v8.0 (going now with their "Studio" edition for its additional features which specifically includes automatic ICC color profile calibration for the scanner, from a color target).

 

[JoeDavola]

You can install PS on 2 machines, and don't forget to deactivate when building a new rig. I did that a few weeks ago when I built a new computer. I was selling my old system, so I still had the same mobo, cpu etc and deactivated PS when I put it together to sell.
I think the reason you get 2 machines is a desktop and laptop, which is what I do that way I can have PS on dive vactions when shooting underwater stuff.

Silverfast I have not keep up to date, not sure which version I had ( maybe v 5) but it was the best scanner software for sure.
My Nikon LS 2000 scanner died a few years ago, the grease gets hard and nothing will move. Tried fixing it but decided to get a new LS 5000. I'm just using Nikon scan for now, it takes a tweaked ini file to get it working with Win 7 64, but that is easy to do ( thank you google ).

I still have lots of slides to scan

.
Here is my stuff, mostly underwater and landscapes, a mix of digital and scanned slides

 

[dsperber]

Here is my stuff, mostly underwater and landscapes, a mix of digital and scanned slides

Very very nice galleries.

Was that Mt. Rainier taken at night? 1s, f1.0 - looks like broad daylight. I had a shot like that from Yosemite many years ago, when I couldn't even remember taking it. I'd actually taken it at night, full-moon shining off of Yosemite Falls, and it looked like this. Green valley, blue sky... but at night. My only clue was that there actually were stars in that blue sky. Yours doesn't even have that clue but I'm still guessing it was a night shot. Very nice.

The Belize shots were terrific as well.

Good stuff.

(My nephew just shagged a new D4, because he just was not happy enough with his D700!!! His collection of lenses, flashes, tripods, cases, etc., could pay for a new car.)

 

[JoeDavola]

Here is my stuff, mostly underwater and landscapes, a mix of digital and scanned slides

Very very nice galleries.

Was that Mt. Rainier taken at night? 1s, f1.0 - looks like broad daylight. I had a shot like that from Yosemite many years ago, when I couldn't even remember taking it. I'd actually taken it at night, full-moon shining off of Yosemite Falls, and it looked like this. Green valley, blue sky... but at night. My only clue was that there actually were stars in that blue sky. Yours doesn't even have that clue but I'm still guessing it was a night shot. Very nice.

The Belize shots were terrific as well.

Good stuff.

(My nephew just shagged a new D4, because he just was not happy enough with his D700!!! His collection of lenses, flashes, tripods, cases, etc., could pay for a new car.)

LOL, never noticed the 1s, f/1.0, that is a scanned slide so it made a strange exif.
That was late morning on the Comet Falls trail, 20mm lens and you can see the vignetting from a polarizer filter in the upper right.
I need to rescan that, it was scanned with the LS 2000 and the LS 5000 is 4000 ppi and makes much nicer scans.

I downloaded the trial version of Silverfast 8, wow is all I can say. It's not cheap software, but offers so much more than Nikon scan.

My brother and I have accumulated a rather large lens collection over the last 20 years, currently using a D200 body. I'd love to get my hands on the D800, but that would mean buying a new underwater housing, and they aren't cheap.

 

[mjf]

Scanning slides and negatives is not for the lazy (like me). I have an Epson V600 and still need to do post processing.

 

[JoeDavola]

Scanning slides and negatives is not for the lazy (like me). I have an Epson V600 and still need to do post processing.

I look at is as a long term project

 

[dsperber]

I downloaded the trial version of Silverfast 8, wow is all I can say. It's not cheap software, but offers so much more than Nikon scan.

A remarkable feature is the auto-calibration from a color target. You buy a color target from them (they come in all sizes, but I bought a 5x7 one for no good reason other than it seems reasonable) for a few dollars, it's shipped from Florida, and it arrives. (My nephew has wallet-sized color targets, so that he can "get his white-balance set up correctly" when he starts a photographic adventure)

You then put it on the scanner plate, close the lid, and push the "auto-calibrate" button from Silverfast. It finds the target, figures out the orientation (even if you've placed it askew on the glass), scans the thing, identifies all of the colors (as scanned) on the target which it knows what colors they should be, figures out what the appropriate "offsets" should be, and saves an ICC profile for subsequent use.

Then, whenever you scan anything, you can set the "auto color correction" option ON, and the scanned results are amazing. Significantly improved from having the option set OFF. It's like doing an image adjustment in Photoshop, pushing the "auto tone" (or "auto levels" in older versions"), except that's how the scan appears from Silverfast. Looks amazing.

Also, it does a terrific and much faster job of de-screening (e.g. for when you scan printed magazine pictures or CD covers) than the prior software version did. I don't generally scan transparencies (although I do have the plastic holder/attachments that came with my 4800x9600DPI Epson 4990), but I did experiment once with some old slides from summer camp many eons ago.

Anyway, if you're a serious scanner, I think the price for Silverfast Ai v8 is worth it.

My brother and I have accumulated a rather large lens collection over the last 20 years, currently using a D200 body. I'd love to get my hands on the D800, but that would mean buying a new underwater housing, and they aren't cheap.

I had a D200 for years. Sold it and bought a D300 back in late 2007. Modest lens collection for my modest photographic needs. I'm not my nephew.

 

[edwardallene]

Photoshop CS6 software is good for editing. It is very ideal for editing who has a passion for photoraphy.