Without doubt, Photoshop is the most popular pixel manipulation tool for anyone who makes (or aspires to make) money from images. Today, Adobe opens its street stall and lays out the latest version for download and purchase – but with a difference.
KitGuru dodges and burns its way to the front.
Alongside a range of under-the-bonnet changes that no one will ever really notice – and a bunch of user interface changes that we will all complain about – Adobe has actually packed some powerful, noticeable changes into its latest version, CS6.
Video editing is given more of a welcome in CS6 and retouching has been enhanced in several ways (by making the software itself more ‘content aware').
Looking at the success of 3rd party tools, Adobe has also included a more powerful correction system for lenses etc in CS6 – which will be welcomed by Nikon and Canon lovers everywhere.
More importantly, the Mercury Graphics Engine that lies at the heart of CS6 will now have a much more open approach to GPGPU – using AMD Radeon cards as well as the existing support for CUDA-enabled GeForce products.
Last, but by no means least, Adobe has decided to give people a different way of buying.
With CS6, you can buy the product for use ‘one month at a time' for just £17.58 – which is an incredibly useful feature, especially if you're running projects that – from time to time – need more personnel.
We tried the purchase system just before hitting ‘Go' on this article, but while the sales pages were all full of love and ‘£' for the UK customer, as soon as you actually tried to make a purchase – you were directed to a US site in dollars that did not want UK customers. Maybe someone in the Adobe web team needs to apply the ‘heal' tool to the store.
KitGuru says: The real ‘killer' here will be the combined price of CS6 Photoshop AND Premiere on the new pay-as-you-go tariff. Right now, new customers are faced with forking out over £1,000 to buy this creative combo separately. If there was a £24.99 a month option for both, then KitGuru believes that there would be a lot of customers ready and willing to take the plunge. We're waiting to see what Adobe decides.
Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.