Switching To Photoshop CS6? 27 New Features and Changes You Need to Know

Mar 23, 2012

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The beta version of Photoshop CS6 is out and there are numerous new features waiting for you to try. Explore the new filters and tools, video editing capabilities, performance boosts, and more! Read this extensive guide and see why CS6 is the best upgrade in Photoshop’s history.

Quick Overview

Watch this video to get a quick overview of all the new features in Adobe Photoshop CS6.

1. Changing Photoshop’s interface color

There’s an entirely new dark color theme for Photoshop and it matches other Adobe products such as Lightroom, After Effects, etc. If you want to change the color theme you can press Shift+F1 to darken or Shift+F2 to lighten.

The four new color themes in Photoshop CS6

You can also set the color theme in the preferences by going to Edit > Preferences > Interface (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Interface (Mac).

2. How Background Save and Auto Save Works

Have you ever had Photoshop crash on you? You’ll be happy to hear about Photoshop’s new auto save feature which saves a backup copy every 5-60 minutes.

Photoshop crashed? Run it again and you’ll find your recovered documents.

You can set the auto save setting by going to Edit > Preferences > File Handling (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling (Mac)

Also new is background save. Saving large Photoshop files can take several minutes and now Photoshop can do it in the background so that you can continue working.

A new save progress bar appears when saving large files.

3. Searching for layers in your 100-layers PSD

A lot of time can be wasted trying to find the right layer to edit. In Photoshop CS6, the Layers palette has been revamped with a new filter menu. Now you can sort and find your layers using different layer properties. To turn filtering off, just press the near the top-right of the palette.

Working on a PSD with 100 layers is less of a headache now thanks to Photoshop CS6’s new layer filtering tool

4. Editing multiple layers at a time

Photoshop CS6 fixes some bugs and adds some enhancements with editing multiple layers. First of all, the Ctrl/Cmd+J hotkey to duplicate layers now work with multiple layers. You can also change blending modes, locking modes, opacity, and apply color labels to multiple layers at a time.