Adobe Photoshop CS6 Available for Free Public Beta

Wednesday March 21, 2012 10:27 pm PDT by Arnold Kim

Adobe has launched a free public beta for their new Photoshop CS6 Beta. As detailed in the press release, the commercial release will follow in the first half of this year for both Mac and Windows. Final pricing has not been announced.

PS6 ui 610x375
According to Macworld, the new version of Photoshop works only on 64-bit Mac systems and is no longer available in 32-bit mode. CNet provides a hands-on look of the new Photoshop and describes some of the many changes:

There's so much big news surrounding Photoshop CS6 that I'm not sure where to start. This is Adobe's first-ever public beta of its most important product (expected to ship sometime in the first half of this year). It's the first Adobe product to incorporate the company's new DRM architecture. It's the first version of Photoshop to take video seriously and to make it into the Standard Edition of the product rather than the extra-pricey Extended version. It's the first version to integrate the company's GPU-accelerating Mercury Graphics Engine (MGE) . And for the first time in more than 20 years, Photoshop goes dark.

Macworld also covers many of the new changes in detail.

Adobe highlights several of the new features found in Photoshop CS6 in this video:

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta is available for download at Adobe's site.

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Top Rated Comments

arn

190 months ago

Why doesn't Adobe just make one version of photoshop and price it at a point where mere mortals can afford it. How about somewhere between $89-$199 and throw it on the app store.

I think you're looking for Photoshop Elements (http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65136385-Photoshop-Elements-10/dp/B005MMMT6E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332394800&sr=8-1)

Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Chaos123x

190 months ago

Why doesn't Adobe just make one version of photoshop and price it at a point where mere mortals can afford it. How about somewhere between $89-$199 and throw it on the app store.

They can use all the DRM they want if they keep pricing it way out of reach of customers reach they will just crack and pirate it.

Wish apple would just end this and either buy adobe or finally unveil they're photoshop killer that's been in development forever and a day.

Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)

wikus

190 months ago

If you can/need more but can't afford it, check out Pixelmator (http://www.pixelmator.com/), which works the same way as Photoshop (incl keyboard shortcuts) for just $29.99, though it is not as full featured as the real thing.

Pixelmator is a sweet app. A great 'in-between' choice for those that need more options than Photoshop Elements but not nearly as many as the full version of Photoshop.

However, no professional is going to use Pixelmator in a studio environment. Clients, agencies, studios, etc all use Photoshop, its the gold standard.

Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Yumunum

190 months ago

I think you're looking for Photoshop Elements (http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65136385-Photoshop-Elements-10/dp/B005MMMT6E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332394800&sr=8-1)

He mentioned making "one version" though. I think he wants just one version of Photoshop at a decent cost.

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

JasonElise1983

190 months ago

Have you worked in marketing, advertising or print? Nobody sends pixelmator format files, everything is PSD. Hence no professional in a studio environment uses it much less relies on it, it'd be suicide.

Have you worked in print/marketing/advertising? When does anyone send a layered PSD to a printer when a Tiff or (generally from InDesign) a PDF would work fine, and generally the printer can't mess with it then. Sorry... But 12 year design vet here, and I've only once sent a PSD, and that was for dynamic data prints.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)