With the release of Adobe Photoshop Cs6 this week the question on a lot of peoples mind is if CS6 is worth the cost of an upgrade. Every year when Adobe releases a new update it’s always a difficult choice to make, should you spend a pretty good amount of money to have the latest and greatest software and will this improve your workflow at all? Personally for my studio I don’t upgrade every year unless there is a really compelling reason. I try and look above the cool new features and think about my daily Photoshop workflow, is there something in the new release that will help me save a lot of time? Or is there a new feature that I have been waiting for and would use daily in my workflow, not just a cool new filter I might use once but something I would use often?

So what’s new with Photoshop CS6 and is it a worthy upgrade? If you are coming from a recent version like CS5 there aren’t a ton of really big changes in CS6. I see this update as a small incremental update and in my opinion doesn’t really include anything thats groundbreaking or a must have. Overall there are some speed improvements that make a few filters blazing fast now like the liquify filter. Depending on how large of files you normally work with and what past version you are coming from the performance might be a big deal or it might not.

Here is a list of some new features in Adobe Photoshop CS6 (click on any of the links for past articles we have with more info)

  • Content-Aware Patch, Move & Extend – An easy way to retouch images
  • New Mercury Graphics Engine – Some big performance issues that some filters really take advantage of
  • Saving big files and liquify improvements in Photoshop CS6
  • Tilt Shift Blur – Although I would prefer to shoot with a tilt shift lens this is a good addition and works great.
  • New oil paint filter

    • – This gives you a lot of creative control to “paint” an image.

  • Improvements to Layers in CS6 – Now includes search and some other workflow improvements
  • New design tools – There are new type styles and vector strokes
  • Video tools – You can now use PS to edit video clips
  • New Crop tool – More precision in the new crop tool
  • Preset migration and sharing – Transfer your presets, workspaces, and settings

    • Adobe Camera Raw 7 plug-in – Reveal rich detail in both the highlights and shadows

  • Adaptive Wide Angle Tool – Now you can adjust for wide angle lenses to straighten objects
  • New erodible brushes – Brush things in with more realistic effects
  • Background Save – Just like many apps now PS will save your work in the background so no more lost work!

    • In general I think Photoshop CS6 is a nice update but if you are currently running CS5 there isn’t a ton of huge new features. If you are coming from an older version like CS3 or CS4 then it might be time to upgrade, with the performance boost and some of the new features above it might be time to upgrade. Also with the new creative cloud offering you can upgrade for only $29/month which is a great value for the entire CS6 suite. Get more info about the creative cloud here: What you need to know about Adobes Creative Cloud

    What do you think about Photoshop CS6? Are you going to upgrade or have questions? Let me know in the comments below.

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