Photoshop 6 - Looks to be a pretty major upgrade

[nwoods]

I was surfing some of the online videos that showcase what's going to be included in the forthcoming Photoshop 6 release. Amazing stuff. Totally revamped GUI, totally overhauled Camera Raw processor, multithreading on steroids, and lots of new built in features such as Tilt-Shift blur, more content-aware options, etc...

Links:
- Adobe previews: http://9to5mac.com/2012/02/15/adobe-...photoshop-cs6/
- New Blurs and Crops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=360YUNYuk0U (be sure to view the related videos on the right hand column too)
- Deblurring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxjiQoTp864

[Tucson T4R]

Oh sure, first LR 4 and now this PS 6. I better start saving my pennies.

[tdesanto]

Oh sure, first LR 4 and now this PS 6. I better start saving my pennies.

Yessir!

[nwoods]

I better start saving my pennies.

That was exactly what I was thinking.....or just chuck it all and go minimalist, with Pixelator: http://www.pixelmator.com/

[ywen]

6 really? I've used it.. and it wasn't all it was hyped up to be..

[nwoods]

Lol, yes I suppose it would be appreciably more accurate to call it Photoshop Creative Suite 6 :-)
I too have a copy of Ps6, on cd no less. Why have programs swelled up in size so much that they need to be on DVD these days?

[DiploStrat]

Mild trolling question: How many still use Photoshop, as opposed to Lightroom/Aperture, and what specific features make it worth the extra step of creating a TIFF/PSD?

A serious question as I am not a pro and I find that my use of Photoshop Elements has dwindled to almost nothing.

Would sincerely like to know how the big boys are using the big iron.

[Tucson T4R]

I'm not a "big boy" but I do still value both Lightroom and Photoshop. I use Lightroom for all of my general post postprocessing and seldom use Photoshop but there are times when Lightroom can't do something I need like masking and layers to change a background or merge selected portions of two images. Until I can do that in LR I feel I still need PS for those 3% outliers.

[DiploStrat]

... I feel I still need PS for those 3% outliers.

That's about the ratio of my Elements use. Of course, Elements only works at 8 bit, but I really only use it for layers and graphics - not for image/color/exposure correction.

[nwoods]

I am an admitted curmugdeon when it comes to Lightroom. I just hate it, mostly due to my lack of understanding in how to use it. I hate the user interface of Lightroom to the point of being obstinate about learning how to use it. So I use Bridge, with its built in hooks to Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. I use Camera Raw to edit exposure/color/sharpness/hue/tint/saturation/contrast or realign and crop, etc... As needed, I open from Bridge to Camera Raw to Photoshop to clone stamp or healing brush various undesired elements (I frequently get dusty sensors in the outdoor environment I shoot in). I assemble pano's from Bridge to Photoshop. I sort the sequencing of the photos in Bridge, and then I batch rename them within Bridge. I then web optimize and sharpen everything by batch process from Bridge using Photoshop's engine. From my limited experience in head to head use against a novice Lightroom user, I am HOURS faster in my workflow that he was, in processing similar amounts of photos, with similar lighting challenges and exposure problems, of the same general photographic subjects, with arguably better results (in image quality, not photographic quality).

Example:

My shot, processed in ACR from Bridge using Photoshop CS5 suite


My friend's shot, processed in Lightroom 3.


I shot with a canon, he shot Nikon. He shot in RAW (NEF?) I shot in JPG. He processed on Win7, with a decent 17" laptop, I processed mine on a terrible 10" ultracompact mostly useless laptop, also on Win7, but with such limited graphics memory that it can't run Aero interface. I processed probably 400+ images in about an hour, it took him several days for a similar quantity. We did the processing at Starbucks after a long hot day: