Adobe Photoshop CS6 review

Adobe has also sought to make more of the extraordinary content-aware processing introduced in CS5. Now, there’s a dedicated Content-Aware Move tool that lets you make a selection and move it to a new location, with the gap left behind automatically filled in. This isn’t as exciting as it sounds, though; the existing method of cutting and pasting to a layer, then filling the original selection provides greater control and better results. The new tool’s Extend mode does, however, make it easier to stretch linear textures such as floorboards.

And Photoshop CS6 significantly extends its content-aware capabilities by building them into the Patch tool. Before, you were stuck with Photoshop’s best guess based on the selection’s immediate surroundings; now, after creating the selection, the Patch tool can be dragged to any area of the image to fine-tune the texture generation process. A huge improvement.

Video editing

Photoshop CS6’s big surprise, however, comes in the form of its video-handling capabilities. Already available in Photoshop Extended, these have been made available to a wider audience and overhauled. To start using Photoshop CS6 for moving images, simply open the new Timeline tab and hit the Create Video Timeline button. Each image layer is then added to the timeline, and you can simply right-click on them to add typical motion and pan-and-zoom effects, and hit Play to view the results onscreen.

This is only the beginning. Cross-fade effects and music can also be added, and keyframes set for position, opacity and style with Photoshop automatically interpolating the in-between frames. Crucially, video footage in a whole range of formats is also supported, including AVI, FLV, MPEG, MP4, MOV and WMV, and these layers can be treated in the same way. The results can be saved to PSD for future editing or can be rendered out in DPX, H.264 or QuickTime formats.

It’s by no means a replacement for Premiere Pro, but it’s impressive stuff for a photo editor. Throw in a number of other capabilities such as a reworked text engine, complete with advanced OpenType support, character and paragraph styling, improved simulation of airbrush and charcoal media, better preset handling and sharing, and dozens of time-saving tweaks, and it’s clear that Photoshop CS6 has plenty to offer every user, from professional photographers through to graphic designers.