In a blast from the past, the Computer History Museum has released the original source code to the 1990 version 1.0.1 of Photoshop with the permission of Adobe Systems Inc.

The Computer History Museum says:

“All the code is here with the exception of the MacApp applications library that was licensed from Apple. There are 179 files in the zipped folder, comprising about 128,000 lines of mostly uncommented but well-structured code. By line count, about 75% of the code is in Pascal, about 15% is in 68000 assembler language, and the rest is data of various sorts.”

The first ever version of Photoshop was released in 1988, and was the demo and first known copy of the software, but was not released publicly. It was developed by brothers Thomas and John Knoll, and was originally called ImagePro before they realised that the name had already been taken. The program was renamed Photoshop, and the name stuck.

After demonstrating the software to Apple and Adobe in 1988, Adobe bought the license to distribute in September of that year. In 1990, version 1.0.1 was released for Macintosh exclusively. It was the fourth ever version of Photoshop.

If you want to get your hands on this piece of computer history, download it here. You can also access the user guide, and a tutorial for this version.

Via: Engadget Source: Computer History Museum

Photoshop brushes are a fun way to add more creativity to your designs. They are simple to create, and every designer should have their own collection. With the popularity of brushes growing, you can find a vast number of them online for free. But half the fun of using brushes in your design work comes from making them from scratch yourself – so here’s how!

01 Remove the colour
Open ‘splat01_before.jpg’ and go to Image>Adjustments>Black & White to remove the colour information. To boost the contrast, darken Reds by dragging the slider to -30, and lighten Yellows by dragging the slider up to 90.

02 Boost contrast
We want a white background, so go to Image>Adjustment>Levels and hold Alt, then drag the white point slider inwards to 219. This will give a view of any pixels being clipped to pure white. Repeat with the black point slider to reveal areas clipped to pure black and drag to 8.

03 Create a brush
Grab the Polygonal Lasso tool and draw a rough selection around a splat. Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset and name ‘Splat01’. Grab brush tool and click on Brush Preset Picker, then scroll down to see the new brush. Repeat step to define more brushes.

04 Save brush set
Grab Brush tool and click on Brush Picker, then click on the fly out menu and select Preset Manager. To create a brush set, hold Cmd/Ctrl and select all three new brushes. Click Save Set, then name ‘Splat Brushes’ and click save.

05 Create a design
Go to File>New and select the International Paper preset at size A4. Go to Image>Image Rotation>90 degrees CW. Grab Type tool, select desired font and type ‘Splat’. Grab move tool, check Show transform controls, and drag the bounding box to resize the word.

06 Paint with brushes
Highlight the Background Layer and click the New layer icon in the Layers panel. Select a brush, resize using square bracket keys and adjust angle by moving the circular icon in Brush Tip settings panel. Repeat with other brushes and change the colour using the colour picker.

Photo Editing: how to import and organise images

Okay, you want to spend your time improving your images, not organising your hard disk, but following these four tips will take you just a few minutes but potentially save you hours of wasted effort and frustration later on. You might already be using Bridge, the file-management utility that comes with Photoshop, to preview and organise your photos, but our tips will show you four sure-fire ways to get even more out of it and make your life easier. We’re using Photoshop CS4 on a PC here, but the same techniques will also work in Elements’ Organizer, in other versions of Photoshop, and on a Mac (substitute the Command key for Ctrl).

Tip 1 Get organised instantly
Ever lost a digital photo? Ever tried to recover a corrupted or accidentally deleted image? Ever wasted time just trying to find the shot you wanted? The solution is easy – and almost entirely automated. When you’re ready to import your photos from your camera or memory card, go to Get Photos from Camera in Bridge or Elements’ Organizer. This launches Adobe Photo Downloader.

Enable both Convert to DNG and Save Copies To, set the locations and options for both, and click Get Photos. All your original images will be filed in your selected back-up location; copies will be converted to DNG files and saved to a folder you specify (or, if you wish, to a new sub-folder labelled with the shoot date, the import date or a custom name of your choice).

Tip 2 Use tags for faster finds
How good is your memory? If you’re organised, you’ll probably import photos into folders marked with the date of each shoot or possibly the name of the occasion (such as ‘Egypt Trip’ or ‘Ali’s Wedding’), but are you going to remember every location six months later (‘Was that Aswan or Luxor?’)? Are you going to recognise who’s who in every shot? What if you want to find ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of Ali? You need an easy, reliable method for labelling your images, and Bridge gives you exactly that in the form of Keywords.

After importing your images into Bridge or Elements’ Organizer, take a few moments to tag them with relevant keywords. Simply click once on an image thumbnail to highlight it (then optionally Ctrl-click on others to highlight them in addition, or Shift-click to highlight a range of adjacent images), go to the Keywords palette, and click the words that apply to the selected image(s).

Want a new tag? Just right-click in the Keywords palette and select New Keyword or New Sub Keyword to add one. Now you’ll be able to find the shots you want days or months later simply by right-clicking in the Keywords palette and choosing Find.

Tip 3 Speed up searches
Shooting digital eliminates the costs of processing film, but you might now have several memory cards full of hundreds of shots to assess. To save you having to wade through all those images repeatedly, use Bridge’s star rating system in addition to keywords.

On your first look through, start by giving any acceptable photo an initial two stars by simply hitting Ctrl-2. Then filter by rating, take a closer look, and increase the rating of the best shots by simply tapping Ctrl-> (the key with the full stop or period on it).

If you wish, you can reduce any image’s rating by hitting Ctrl-< (the key with the comma on it). You can now filter by rating at any time in the future to view only the best of your photos.

Tip 4 Automatic ACR processing
Adobe’s Camera Raw (ACR) editor makes it easy to bring out the best in every shot or add a personal style, such as ‘high contrast, low saturation’. If you’ve hit upon a particular formula you like, save it as a setting in ACR (in the Palette menu at the top-right of each tab).

You can then apply this setting to any other image without even opening it in ACR: simply right-click on the shot (or multiple shots) in Bridge and select Develop Settings from the menu that pops open (You can also apply the Camera Raw Defaults or your last-used ACR settings).

What’s more, you can adjust any effects at any time by opening the processed image in ACR, or remove them without affecting the original file.

Photo Editing: get more from raw files

The Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) editor is a fantastic option for perfecting the exposure and white balance of your images, and newer versions of the editor also include some superb tools for further adjustments and effects, from removing lens artifacts to split colour toning.

It’s designed for raw files, of course, which contain the full tonal and colour information captured by the camera sensor; but you can also use it on your JPEGs: go to File>Open As, navigate to your image, and choose Camera Raw in the Open As menu; or in Bridge, right-click and then choose Open in Camera Raw from the menu.

Tip 5 Get it white
Correcting white balance is one of the primary functions of ACR. The presets in the White Balance menu each have the same effect as selecting that setting in-camera, so pick the one that best represents the lighting conditions when you took the shot, then fine-tune with the Temperature slider if necessary.

Even simpler is the White Balance Tool: click with it on a spot in your image that should be a colour-neutral grey – light greys or diffuse whites work best. As a check, use the Colour Sampler Tool to place a few markers in any spots that you think should be a colour-neutral grey: once you’ve corrected the white balance, these spots should have ‘equal’ R, G and B values (such as R120, G120, B120 or R30, G30, B30).

Tip 6 Rescue highlight detail
Digital cameras are much more sensitive to highlight information than film was and often capture detail even in areas that seem burnt-out. You can often pull back detail from blown highlights using the Recovery slider. First enable the highlight clipping display by pressing O (for ‘overexposed’): clipped highlights will show up in the image as red, but they might be clipped in only one or two channels, with detail you can rescue in the remaining channel(s).

Make any larger-scale exposure correction with the Exposure slider, then nudge the Recovery slider to the right and watch for any remaining red overlay to disappear. Take it gently – Recovery adjustments can darken other, correctly-exposed highlight tones, dulling the image down and causing it to look flat, so you might just need to live with some highlight clipping.

Tip 7 Fix tricky exposures
In bright conditions, capturing a perfect exposure can be all but impossible: expose for the sky, and the ground will end up deep in shadow; expose for the foreground, and the sky will be blown out.

If you’ve not got a graduated ND lens filter with you, one solution is to try ACR’s targeted sliders back in the digital darkroom: Exposure and Recovery to adjust highlights and brighter midtones, then the Blacks and Fill Light sliders for the shadows.

The latter two sliders are relatively blunt instruments, though, and ACR’s Tone Curve (available if you’re running ACR under Photoshop) is a much more precise way of adjusting parts of the tonal range selectively (for more on this technique, see How to fix bleached out skies in Photoshop).

Tip 8 Give your shots an edge
Vignetting is very common when using wide-angle lenses, particularly at extreme settings – at the widest angles of view. Although vignetting is often regarded as a flaw, it’s also sometimes added as a popular creative effect to ‘frame’ an image and draw attention where it’s wanted in wedding portraits, for example (see our free wedding photography cheat sheet), but can be just as tricky to control in-camera as it is difficult to avoid when you’re out shooting a sweeping landscape.

The digital darkroom gives you much more control, so whether you want to remove the effect or add it, try the sliders under ACR’s Lens Corrections tab – the Post Crop variant gives you extra control over the vignette shape and extent.

Photo Editing: add impact to your images

Whether you want to adjust colours or tones in your image or convert it to black and white, we’ll show you how to do so with more precision and more flexibility. Key to this is using Adjustment Layers, which enable you to apply a wide range of adjustments and effects to an image without irretrievably altering its pixel content, which means you can hide or remove the effect at any time.

Click the black and white ‘half-moon’ button in the Layers Palette to view the list of edits you can apply as Adjustment Layers.

Tip 9 Removable adjustments
Many edits or commands applied from the Image>Adjustments sub-menu – will alter the pixel content of your image permanently. If you change your mind, the only way to undo them is to step back in the History. The ‘non-destructive’ alternative is to use Adjustment Layers, which enable you to apply Levels, Hue/Saturation and many other edits on separate Layers.

Just as a red Cellophane overlay will make a photo print appear red without actually recolouring it, Adjustment Layers ‘lie on top’ of an image and change its appearance without altering it permanently – which means you can discard the adjustment at any time, hide it temporarily, or even revisit it to tweak its settings.

If you want to try out alternative effects, you can group Adjustment Layers and hide or show whole groups at a time to help you decide between them.

Tip 10 Mono with impact
A great black and white image isn’t just a colour shot with the colour removed. Each of the colour channels within the photo contains a slightly different version of the image – there might be more contrast in the red channel, for example, or a greater tonal range in the green.

The secret to a great mono conversion is to make the most of this tonal richness by mixing the info from the various channels to suit the image or the result you have in mind. Photoshop’s Channel Mixer was the traditional tool for this, but there’s now the option of a Black & White adjustment Layer.

You can use the sliders to add or subtract information from each channel or pairs of channels, apply a selection of presets and then fine-tune them, or click in your image to pinpoint the exact tones you want to adjust, then drag left or right to lighten or darken them.

Tip 11 Master tone control
The Curves dialog within Photoshop is almost identical to the version in Adobe Camera Raw but has one distinct advantage. In the top left corner of the Curves dialog you will see a small hand and arrow icon, On-Image adjustment tool.

Once clicked you can drag the cursor over the image and instantly see where the tones in the image relate to the curve – click and drag the mouse up or down those tones will lighten or darken. You can place up to 14 of these control points on the curve, but two or three is usually enough.

Tip 12 Canny colour control
Photoshop gives you extensive control over the colours in an image. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment Layer and you can alter the saturation or intensity of all the colours or a selected range of colours, make them lighter or darker, or even make the blues a touch more green.

The problem is, though, if you want to give washed-out reds more punch, it’s hard not to push more intense reds too far, even if you try to restrict the effect by using selections.

A great alternative is the Vibrance slider. It applies ‘non-linear’ adjustments, which means less-saturated pixels get more of a boost than already intense ones, and vice-versa when you’re reducing saturation.

This enables you to boost or subdue colours with less risk of clipping or posterisation – and it boasts skin tone protection to prevent you turning portrait subjects ‘sunburnt’ or deathly pale.

Photo Editing: how to retouch photos creatively

Retouching is the first thing that leaps to many people’s minds when they hear the word ‘Photoshop’, but as so often, there’s more than one way to re-skin a virtual cat.

The handest tip to remember is always to retouch on a separate Layer: either make a selection around the area you want to work on and float it to a new Layer by pressing Ctrl-J, or simply add a new blank Layer and enable your retouching tools’ Sample All Layers or Current & Below option.

Your retouching will take place on a Layer of its own, which you can hide, blend or mask as required – use these expert techniques to make them more precise and subtle.

Tip 13 Make more of masks
The principles of masks are that black areas of a mask conceal corresponding areas of the image content of that Layer, and white areas reveal them.

For more subtle effects, bear in mind that grey areas of the mask partially conceal the image content or adjustment – the darker the grey, the more they conceal it.

Want to check how your image looks with and without the mask? Hold down Shift and click the mask thumbnail to toggle it off temporarily; Shift-click it again to reactivate it.

Alt-click on the mask thumbnail to view the mask itself instead of the image in the main window – great for working on detail or fine-tuning, particularly touching-up grey partially-masked areas.

Tip 14 Self blends
In summertime landscape photos, the distant background often looks hazy and ‘washed out’. Here’s a simple but highly controllable alternative to separate exposure and contrast adjustments. Duplicate the Background Layer and change the blending mode of the new Layer to Overlay – this adds contrast and boosts the colours.The effect can be a little extreme, though, so reduce the Layer opacity as necessary.

Alternatively, add a Levels adjustment Layer, OK the dialog without touching any settings, and change the Layer Blending mode to Multiply to darken the image, or Screen to lighten it.

Adjust opacity to fine-tune – if you’re used to thinking in photographic terms and want to be very precise, an opacity of exactly 38% has the same effect as adjusting exposure by a full f-stop; 19% is equivalent to a half-stop adjustment, about 13% one-third of a stop, 76% two stops (as here), and so on. Localise the effect by painting on the Layer mask.

Tip 15 Preserve detail
The key to success in retouching is often knowing when to clone and when to heal. Both sets of tools lay down pixels sampled from elsewhere, but the healing tools then additionally blend these pixels into their new surroundings, and this invariably has the effect of blurring or distorting detail, so if preserving detail is important then the Clone Stamp is your best bet.

The Spot Healing Brush is usually the fastest option for removing dust spots and similar blemishes from areas of relatively uniform colour and tone such as clear blue skies, but even with this tool, clicking instead of brushing will often help preserve subtle tones and detail.

Bear in mind that not only Layers but also brush-based tools can be set to different blending modes, altering their behaviour: set the Clone Stamp to Lighten mode, for example, and it will replace only pixels that are darker than the colours you’ve sampled.

This is fantastic for cloning away distractions behind a blonde-haired portrait subject: sample areas darker than the hair and the tool won’t affect it.

Tip 16 Smarter dodging and burning
Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn Tools can be invaluable for those localised contrast tweaks that give an image more punch and depth, but before you get stuck in with either tool, make sure you set the Exposure to no more than 5 per cent – any more and you’ll quickly see a marked loss in image quality.

Work carefully – the effects of these tools are cumulative, so avoid going over the same area repeatedly. For gentle changes, avoid working in the midtones: if you’re using the Dodge Tool, set Range to Highlights so you lighten only light tones; if using the Burn Tool, set Range to Shadows so you darken primarily dark tones.

Alternatively, try using the Brush Tool set to Soft Light mode and a low Opacity (say 10 per cent): paint with a large, soft brush using any colour lighter than 50 per cent grey to lighten (dodge) areas, and any colour darker than 50 per cent grey to darken (burn).

Photo Editing: get a perfect finish

Have you ever taken some time, and possibly quite a bit of trouble, to get a photograph spot-on, only to then face having to adjust another dozen or more from the same shoot? If you’re using Adobe Camera Raw, you can open multiple images in Filmstrip mode and then click Synchronize to copy any or all of the adjustments you’ve made on one image and apply them to the others.

In Photoshop it’s possible to drag adjustment Layers from one image onto another. Alternatively, you can record a sequence of edits as an Action and then apply them to other images, one by one or all together using the File>Automate>Batch commands.

Tip 17 Automated edits
Photoshop offers automation options to save you time, avoid tedious repetition or ensure consistent adjustments to multiple images: you can record a sequence of edits and commands as an Action. Simply click the Create New Action button in the Actions palette, give the Action a name (or double-click it afterwards to do this), hit Record, work through the edits, and click Stop when done.

You can then ‘play’ the Action at any time to apply the edits to any image (but do be wary – don’t record a Save As, for instance, or you’ll save over the same file every time you run the Action). You can assign a keystroke shortcut to play your Action, either when you create it or afterwards by selecting Action Options in the Actions palette menu.

Tip 18 Pin-sharp pictures
Digital photos often turn out a bit less sharp than you expect – particularly raw files. You might not notice this on-screen, though, unless you zoom in to 100 per cent (or more) and check specifically – most images will probably look a little soft.

Photo-editing can have a further softening effect, so it’s good practice to apply some sharpening as the final step in the editing process. All sharpening risks exacerbating (or even introducing) image noise, but Unsharp Mask’s Threshold control can help offset this, making this filter still a great first option.

Smart Sharpen lacks a Threshold control; but conversely, if you click the Advanced button, it does enable you to ‘fade’ or pull back the sharpening effect in Shadow areas, where noise is likely to be lurking, or apply different settings in the Highlights to make them ‘pop’.

Tip 19 Save those trees!
As well as new tools and features, CS4 introduced some pretty fundamental changes to Photoshop, such as a completely new way of adjusting tone or other characteristics of an image by clicking and dragging left and right (to learn more about the new CS6 package, see Photoshop CS6: 20 things you need to know).

Oddly, though, as if to offset these new gains, some of those extras that we’ve been used to for years in Photoshop have now been omitted from the standard install. Some will go unmissed, but others are pretty useful and well worth taking the trouble to restore.

Among the latter group is Picture Package. To get this back you’ll need to dip into the Goodies folder on your Photoshop install disc or locate the files in the Adobe Downloads website. Once installed, Picture Package enables you to arrange multiple images (or a single image repeated) on one sheet of paper.

This is not only a smart way of getting the most economical use out of a sheet of expensive photo paper; it’s also great if you want to print the same photo in a variety of different sizes – with a family portrait, say, you might want a large print to frame, a small one for your wallet, plus mid-size copies you can send to far-flung relatives.

Tip 20 Go online
These days you’re more likely to want to share your photos electronically than on paper. Photoshop can help you create a complete photo gallery site of your own from scratch.

Start by putting copies of all the images you want to include in a folder or selecting them all in Bridge, then go to File>Automate>Web Photo Gallery (or Tools>Photoshop>Web Photo Gallery in Bridge).

Choose a basic layout for your site from the Styles pop-up menu, and your choice will be previewed at the right of the dialog (though only at thumbnail size). Select a location for your site files, then work your way through the Options panels one by one; finally, click OK to have Photoshop create your site for you.

READ MORE

Learn how to make a face swap
99 common photography problems (and how to solve them)
50 free photo frames and borders for Photoshop
Free Photoshop textures

The app also includes a full list of questions and flash cards to browse through at your leisure in case you can’t face the pressure of a timed quiz.

If you think it’s time to test your knowledge of Photoshop, give it a go and download it from the iTunes store.

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Practical Photoshop’s technique editor James Paterson has just been shortlisted in the Adobe Photoshop Evangelist competition. It’s now down to a public vote via Adobe’s Facebook page. Obviously we think he should win so  we’d really appreciate  it if you go here: http://on.fb.me/IuGp0D  and vote for: Make Eyes Sparkle and Zoom with Birds Eye View by James P we need as many votes as possible before April 23nd -  Remember you can vote once a day!

Thanks from the Practical Photoshop team!

Adobe has officially unveiled its Photoshop CS6 beta, a preview of what’s to come in the next release of its Photoshop CS software.

The Photoshop CS6 beta is available as a free download from Adobe Labs. Customers can download the beta, try out the experience and provide feedback to the product team.

Photoshop CS6 beta is available for the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows platforms. The final Photoshop CS6 release date is expected in the first half of 2012.

New Features in Photoshop CS6 Beta

Key features of CS6 include new additions to the Content-Aware tools: Content-Aware Patch allows greater control by letting users select and duplicate an area of an image to fill in or “patch” another. Content-Aware Move lets users select and move an object to a new place in the image.

A new Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, enables near-instant results from popular photo editing tools including Liquify, Puppet Warp, Transform and Lighting Effects; and Photoshop CS6 also introduces a new modern interface featuring dark UI options.

New and re-engineered design tools make creating designs faster and more efficient. Vector layers allow users to apply dashed lines and gradient strokes, searchable layers help quickly zero in on any layer you need, and new type styles let designers quickly apply type treatments to their designs.

In addition, the Photoshop CS6 beta offers all the features of Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended, such as new 3D editing features and quantitative imaging analysis capabilities. These features will be included in the shipping version of Photoshop CS6 Extended when it becomes available.

Photoshop CS6 Price and Availability

The Photoshop CS6 beta is available immediately as a free download in English and Japanese. At installation, users will be required to provide an Adobe ID to complete a one-time login and online product activation.

For information on how to install Photoshop CS6 beta visit http://www.adobe.com/go/photoshopcs6. Customers can submit feedback via the Photoshop CS6 beta forum.

Users can also connect with the Photoshop team via the community-powered site; on Facebook; YouTube; or via Twitter.

Get our exclusive digital copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 Preview to read on your iPad.

Perhaps the most celebrated change in Photoshop CS6 is its new interface. Straightaway you’ll notice a new darker look to Photoshop, but the changes to CS6′s interface go much deeper than a mere colour change.

Below we’ve rounded up seven of the most important changes you should know about the new Photoshop CS6 interface.

01 Screen layout button
Previously a button on the Options Bar, Screen Layout has been moved to the bottom of the main Tools Panel. Here the idea was to save screen real estate in the Options Bar, which makes sense.

02 Dark interface
The new default Photoshop is dark, like Lightroom and some other Adobe applications. The intention is to focus more attention on the image itself, and it’s part of a general clean-up of the interface. If you don’t like it, you can override it.

03 Crop tool
This has received a major overhaul, and is now similar to Lightroom’s. When you rotate it, the image rotates, not the crop rectangle, and you can use guides such as the Rule of Thirds.

04 Layer filter
When you have a complex multi-layer document, the new Layer Filter helps you examine the Layer stack. You can see all layers with a certain effect, search by name and filter the stack down to Adjustment Layers or other types.

05 Workspaces & documents
The workspace switcher is now a drop-down including a handy What’s New workspace. Also, it can no longer be dragged out across the Options area. Its previous neighbour, Document Layout, is now found under the Window>Arrange menu.

06 Properties Panel
The separate Adjustments and Masks Panels have been merged into a single Properties Panel. Double-click the adjustment icon or the mask thumbnail in the Layers Panel to activate the panel.

07 Layer Blend If indicator
When you were trying to work out why a composite wasn’t working, one frustration was having to reopen the Layer Properties Dialog to check if you had set the conditional Blend If sliders. An icon now appears directly on the layer.

Get our exclusive digital copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 Preview to read on your iPad.

Photoshop CS6 is finally here! Albeit in beta form. Nevertheless, we’ve spent the past few weeks putting Photoshop CS6 through its paces. There’s been a good deal to get our teeth into and we think that the additions to this new version of Photoshop CS will be welcomed by new and old Photoshop users alike.

The most obvious change in Photoshop CS6 is the darker interface, but there are plenty of other more intriguing new features, as well as plenty of tweaks and upgrades to existing Photoshop tools. Below are 20 things you need to know about Photoshop CS6 and how it can enhance your photo editing experience.

Photoshop CS6: 20 things you need to know

01 Oil Paint Filter 

Filter>Oil Paint is an astonishing way to transform pictures, and offers a lot of control over how a seemingly random pattern of brush strokes is added to an image. It came from the now-discontinued Pixel Bender project, which used the GPU for extra processing, so updating the preview is almost instant.

02 Tilt-shift filter 

Filter>Blur>Tilt Shift allows you to add blur off a plane, rather like a Tilt Shift lens. It’s typical of the move towards GPU-accelerated effects with ‘on image’ controls. So instead of a Dialog Box and preview, you drag the controls directly on the image.

03 Controlling the Tift-Shift blur
The space between the Tilt Shift filter’s solid lines is sharp, while the dashed lines denote where the blurring effect is full-on. Drag the lines apart to fine-tune depth of field. The roundel controls where the plane is centred, and its white/black ring sets blur amount. To change the plane’s angle, move the dots above or below the roundel.

04 New Filters menu
The Filters menu has always been one of Photoshop’s best features, but there’s no denying that some of the filters were showing their age. For CS6, Adobe’s designers reviewed many of the older filters, and dropped some including the Pixel Bender ones, and reorganised the menus.

05 On image controls
Old-style filters are based around modal Dialog Boxes that pop up over the picture and contain small previews and sliders. Adobe is moving to 
more ‘on image’ controls such as the hands in adjustment filters and 3D graphics-influenced controls for real-time adjustment.

06 Non-destructive cropping
Delete Cropped Pixels is a useful setting in the new Crop tool. If ticked, Crop works as before, deleting as it crops. But leaving it unticked means that the canvas is cropped and those pixels are left on the layer, should you change your mind. Even the background is converted to a standard layer.

07 New & classic crops
If you’re a Lightroom user, you’ll have no problem with Photoshop’s new Crop tool. But if you really don’t like it, no matter how hard you try, the Options Bar’s fly-out menu has Use Classic Mode. Tick this, and the Crop tool will work in the way you’ve always liked.

08 Lightroom-style rotation
Cropping and adjusting the rotation often go together. CS6 now rotates the image itself and leaves the crop rectangle static, so you see how the image will look once you commit to the crop. Move the cursor outside one of the corners to activate rotation. The guides can be changed on the fly, too – just press O.

09 Aspect ratios
In the Crop tool’s Options Bar are shortcuts to a range of aspect ratios, and you can add your own custom ones as presets. There’s also a very handy command that switches the crop rectangle between landscape and portrait orientation.

10 Character & Paragraph Styles
If you add a lot of text to your Photoshop documents then two new panels are particularly worth checking out. Just like in InDesign, you can now save your favourite font, size, colour, and other type-related settings and edit them via the fly-out menus in the new Character Style and Paragraph Style Panels.

11 Content-Aware Move tool
The new Content-Aware Move tool is found in the same Tools Panel button as Spot Healing and 
Patch, and extends the Content-Aware Fill technology to moving a selection, blending it into its new location, and simultaneously filling in the hole it left. It needs to be used with care, but when it works well, it’s a time saver.

12 Toggle the Layer filter
When you’re working on a complex document, there are times when you need to quickly toggle between a subset of layers and seeing the entire stack. You can quickly set a layer’s colour and use that as your filter.

13 Adobe Camera Raw
One Exposure slider combines the old Exposure and Brightness, and Contrast is made much more prominent. All adjustments are now adaptive or tone-mapped. In the past, only Recovery and Fill Light responded to the image’s tonal characteristics.

14 Blend If indicator
Layers are so useful, you can end up with so many of them that they’re difficult to manage. Photoshop has offered folders to group layers and colours to mark them up, but until now there’s been no way to control and review them. Anyone creating complex multi-layer Photoshop documents will love the new features in the Layers Panel and probably our favourite detail – the Blend If indicator on the layer.

15 Layers Filter
The new Layers Filter is at the top of the Layers Panel and can be configured in a number of ways. Kind allows you to filter the panel and show only text layers, for instance, but the drop-down list lets you find layers with masks, or advanced blending.

16 New process version
When you open a Raw file that was adjusted in a previous version of Adobe Camera Raw, there will be a small exclamation mark, which you click to update the rendition to the latest version. This will likely change your image.

17 Highlight recovery
Adobe Camera Raw 7’s big benefits are significantly better rendition of nearly blown highlights, with two sliders controlling the top ‘zones’, and local white balance adjustment control. Combining Exposure and Brightness into one slider is a good move, not least because users so often overlooked the latter, and a refined Clarity tool now adds twice as much punch to an image.

18 New defaults
Other big changes are that all sliders are set to 0 defaults and have negative values. Drag to the left to reduce the brightness of the tonal range. Also notice how Recovery is gone and Highlights and Whites provide two levels of control over the brighter areas of the image.

19 Erodible brush tips
Hidden in the Brushes Panel is a new type of brush – the Erodible Point. This mimics a graphite pencil, so you can set the Softness slider, and the more you draw, the softer the tip becomes. There’s a button to sharpen the tip, and you can assign a keyboard shortcut to do so, too.

20 Local white balance
One very welcome new feature is that local white balance adjustment is now possible in Adobe Camera Raw. It’s available in the Adjustment Brush and also in the Graduated Filter tool, and is ideal for correcting problems caused by mixed lighting. Another new local adjustment is Moire Reduction, and the other sliders have been updated to match the basic adjustments.

Do you want to try the Photoshop CS6 beta? Visit the Adobe Labs website and download the Photoshop CS6 beta.

Get our exclusive digital copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 Preview to read on your iPad.

Photo art using simple digital painting techniques can transform even the most ham-fisted artist into a budding Rembrandt. You can simply use a photo as a starting point, tracing over the original shapes and colours without having to worry about shape and form.

Here, we’ll show you how to make this style of photo art by giving an image a painting effect with the Smudge tool in Photoshop. As its name suggests, this Photoshop tool smudges colours when you drag it through different shades in an image. However, it’s also an excellent tool for giving your pictures a painting effect.

The painting effect can look like painted strokes, particularly when you use Photoshop’s range of artistic brushes.Here, we’ve worked with a classic still life – a bowl of fruit.

The real delight in Photoshop effects like this lies in watching the image take shape as you apply your strokes. It’s an extremely organic process, with skills and ideas developing as you practise, so open an image and start smudging!

Before Image

Make photo art by using the Smudge tool to create a painting effect

Step 01 Apply a filter
Open fruit_before.jpg in Elements. Press Cmd/ Ctrl+J to duplicate the background layer. Call the new layer ‘Paint Daubs’ and go to Filter > Artistic > Paint Daubs. Set Brush Size to 5 and Sharpness to 7. This will blend the colours. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate the top layer.

Step 02 Create sketch lines
Rename the top layer ‘Glowing Edges’. Go to Filter > Stylise > Glowing Edges. Set Edge Width to 2, Edge Brightness to 8 and Smoothness to 15. Press Cmd/Ctrl+I, then Cmd/Ctrl+U to view the Hue/Saturation box. Drag Saturation to -100. Click the Blend Mode menu and choose Multiply.

Step 03 Prepare your canvas
Click the Create New Layer icon in the Layers panel. Rename the layer ‘Source’ and press Cmd/ Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E to merge a copy of the layers below. Then create another layer. Call it ‘Smudge Paint’ and go to Edit > Fill Layer. Select Color from the Use menu and choose an off-white hue.

Step 04 Set up the tool
In the Layers panel, drag the Source layer above Smudge Paint. Lower Opacity to 14%. Select the Smudge tool. In Options check Sample All Layers and set Strength to 70%. Click the Brush menu and choose Rough Round Bristle from Default Brushes. Highlight the Smudge Paint layer.

Step 05 Start painting
Begin with the Smudge tool. Use the ] and [ keys to resize your brush tip as you paint. Make your strokes follow the line of the shapes, and keep them loose for a painterly feel. Experiment with brushes and strength settings as you go. You could leave a messy border, as we’ve done here.

Step 06 Add depth
Keep painting with the Smudge tool. Then hide the Source layer, highlight Smudge Paint and hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy it. Go to Filter > Stylise > Emboss. Set Angle to 135, Height to 4 and Amount to 100. Change the Blend Mode to Overlay for more depth and a slightly raised feel.

Top Tip: Brush Strokes
To get the most out of digital painting, a good knowledge of Photoshop brushes is required. A little time spent playing with settings can be useful and save you time, too. The Brush panel contains a whole host of different brush tips, and you can download thousands more. Once you’ve got a brush set, you can load it by clicking the flyout menu to the right of the Brush Presets box. Choose Load Brushes. then simply navigate to your chosen tools.

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A bill proposed by state Rep. Katie Hobbs (Democrat – Phoenix) would require advertisers who alter or enhance a photo to put a disclaimer on the ad telling viewers that, “Post-production techniques were made to alter the appearance in this advertisement. When using this product, similar results may not be achieved.”

The bill – House Bill 2793 – would seem to be targeted at companies that use Photoshop tricks like removing wrinkles or curves on models to make a product seem more effective than it might actually be.

“We just wanted to bring it to the table and start a discussion,” Hobbs told local press. “We need to bring attention to these body-image issues, especially with young girls. Girls need to know that they don’t have to look perfect.”

It is believed that Arizona is the first US state to propose such legislation.

It is also believed that the bill has little chance to pass.