Adobe has posted a public beta of ADobe Photoshop CS6 – March 21, 2012. The Photoshop CS6 beta covers both Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended – keep in mind that Extended has additional features that the normal Photoshop doesn’t have, such as 3D image editing.
Update – it is a 60-day trial edition.
Just over a month ago, I posted about a video that Adobe posted concerning Photoshop CS6’s Content Aware features. That’s one of many new or upgraded features.
Features of Photoshop CS6
– Aforementioned Content-Aware upgrades, such as “Content-Aware Patch”
– Increased performance from the “Mercury Graphics Engine”
– Upgraded User Interface, a “modern UI”
– “New and re-engineered design tools.”
It does not require you to obtain a serial number – instead, on the download page, there is this comment:
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.
You will have to login and/or activate the beta online within 7 days after launching Photoshop CS6 beta. When it asks for your Adobe login, you can skip with the “Connect Later” button, but it will ask you.
Update: Hmmm, it appears that you can’t run it without activation and an Adobe account login.
Requirements
– Multicore Intel processor, 64-bit
– Mac OS X 10.6.8 or 10.7
– 1GB of RAM
– 2GB of Hard Drive Space
– 1024×768 or larger display, 256MB video RAM
– OpenGL 2.0 graphics
Photoshop.com has a blog entry explaining why they have dropped support for 32-bit systems.
It’s a pretty fast download even thought it’s 984MB for the Mac version. I’m getting 2.6 MB/sec. It should be noted that this is late at night.
It took around 3-4 minutes to install.
I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it – I sometimes skip Photoshop CS versions to save money or more likely because the latest and greatest features don’t wow me. Plus I’m not that fond of Adobe and how they’ve handled their Mac versions of Photoshop, going back to the PowerPC -> Intel transition.
It was just a few weeks ago that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 was made available.
Other Links
– Adobe Labs – Photoshop CS6 Beta Page
– Adobe Photoshop YouTube Channel