[UPDATE (May 6th) – Major news out: Adobe Unveils New “CC” Release (CS7)...]

At their last MAX conference in October 2011, Adobe showed a sneak peak of some exciting work in progress: the prototype of a new Photoshop Image Deblurring feature that takes shaky photos and brings them into focus. The demonstration was impressive and the tech­nology received huge press at the time, but ultimately was said to be too early stage to make it into the final release of Photoshop CS6 last year.  Since that time, our readers have been asking about the status of the unblurring function – and when, where, and how we might see it finally released and available to the public…

Well now, we may finally have the answer.

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The Creative Cloud and Creative Suite 6 are the most powerful and versatile toolsets Adobe has ever produced and so we’re seeing a lot of demand for training resources to learn how to best use these products…

In January we posted details on over 30 hours of free video tutorials for CS6.  But if you’re just getting started with Adobe’s core design tools, what’s better than a step-by-step book that will teach you the essentials of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign from the ground up?

Fortunately there’s a terrific new book you can download that will teach you all of this for free, courtesy of author Professor Thomas Payne… The way the book does this is by intro­ducing and explaining the tools in a logical way that builds upon what is previously learned. These applica­tions present a vast array of buttons and gadgets that can be overwhelming to the new user. This book makes sense of it all, not showing how everything works, but instead giving a foundation and a path to learn about all those controls and what they can do for you.

The 12 chapters in this book (listed below) look a bit like tutorials. As with tutorials, you work in the programs as you follow along with the reading. Unlike tutorials, the steps here present the informa­tion in a way that is geared to having you actually learn the material, not just a list of steps to get something that looks decent.

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NEWS FLASH – Adobe has just announced a free public beta release of the eagerly-anticipated Photoshop Lightroom 5, with new tools and advancements to develop, enhance and share your digital photographs… Lightroom 5 provides photographers with an elegant and efficient way to work with their growing digital image collections, bring out the best in their images, and make an impact from raw capture to creative output, all while maintaining the highest possible quality each step of the way.

“The Lightroom team is proud to introduce the fifth major version of the product designed for and by photographers. We’ve been hard at work improving an application that’s intended to be as easy to use as it is powerful. This release builds on the image quality improvements in Lightroom 4 to provide a truly complete workflow and imaging solution. We encour­age you to try the beta release and provide your feedback to the product team.”

Available as a free public download for Windows and Mac, the Lightroom 5 beta is a limited-time preview of new features and capabilities that will be offered in the final release of LR5, expected in mid-2013 and available separately as well as part of the Creative Cloud.

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[UPDATE (May 7th) – CS6 is now shipping!]

At Photoshop World last week, we had the chance to sit down with Adobe Senior Product Managers Bryan O’Neil Hughes and Zorana Gee for hours of in-depth walkthroughs of the new Photoshop CS6 release. And all we can say is – on top of what we already knew and experienced – this is the Photoshop version you’ve probably dreamed about…

And with over one million downloads in record time, clearly we’re not the only ones thinking that. The reviews are in: Gizmodo calls it, “The best update in recent memory, I’m in love” … PC Maga­zine says, “The future of creative image editing is upon us – this new version will thrill nearly all categories of users, from photo­graphers to designers” … USA Today writes, “Having lots of fun with the new tools – the beautiful and streamlined new inter­face is a huge improvement, and the images really do look sharper and more pronounced.”

For expediency we put together a quick “cheat sheet” below of the top differences and new features in Photoshop CS6 as compared to PS CS5. Naturally if you’re still on CS4, CS3, or earlier, then you’d also need to add in the differences between CS5 vs. those older versions.

But really, it’s also a fit and polish thing – with two years since the last major release (and having no architectural challenges to worry about), the Photoshop team had plenty time to hone this into a smooth and polished product. This is reflected in the 62% more new features added in this cycle contrasted to the previous one, and nearly twice as many JDI requests (user-focused “Just Do It” items) addressed.

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Did you miss Adobe’s Create Now Tour? Would you like to see it now, online and on-demand?

The two-hour session we attended earlier this month was packed – standing-room only – and got terrific audience reviews and feedback…

In the video below, Adobe Creative Evangelist Terry White presents the Create Now World Tour at a recent stop in Michigan. Watch as Terry walks you through powerful capabilities and new features in the latest versions of Creative Cloud, Photoshop CS6, Illustrator CS6, InDesign CS6, Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition, and Adobe Muse! If you missed the tour in your city, here’s your chance to see what happens at these live events.

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“What’s the difference between the different Photoshops?”

We’ve seen this question sooo many times, we just had to write a complete article about it.  With four different members of the Adobe Photoshop family, it can be confusing what is what and which to get…  And now that Elements 11 is out, it’s a good time to look at this.

If you ask Adobe, they’ll tell you:

Q:  How do Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Extended, Photoshop Elements, and Photoshop Lightroom software differ?

A:  Photoshop Elements 11 (US$99) is designed for people who are just getting started with digital photo editing, and delivers powerful yet easy-to-use options that help you organize, edit, create, share, and help protect your personal photos.

Photoshop CS6 (US$699) is the professional standard for creating and manipulating powerful images, and Photoshop CS6 Extended (US$999) delivers every­thing in Photoshop plus tools for creating and editing 3D images and objects.

Photoshop Lightroom 4 (US$149) addresses the workflow needs of professional and serious amateur photographers, enabling them to import, process, organize, and showcase large volumes of digital photographs quickly, or develop a single image.

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Adobe Evangelist Terry White has a great new training session out to show you how to get started achieving immediate and powerful results using new Photoshop CS6… The 40-minute class covers the basics and steps through how to accomplish the top 10 things that beginners always want to know how to do.

But even seasoned Photoshop users are saying they learned new techniques from the tutorial video below…  Here’s the overview, plus some user reviews:

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Last week we got a sneak peek of a great feature that is likely to be in the next release of Photoshop: a new Camera Shake Reduction Tool, which was previously known as Photoshop Image Deblurring… We expect more details to be revealed about this and other new features in a possible CS7 announcement on May 6th.

But accomplishing this for still images isn’t the only cool deblurring application Adobe has been working on lately… Adobe researchers Jue Wang and Sunghyun Cho have published a paper on an innova­tive new technique to deblur videos as well – which could be huge considering how much handheld video footage is out there now, and growing every day. The develop­ment of this technology could be a big addition to video editing tools like Adobe’s Premiere Pro.

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It’s a question that’s been around a while, yet we still see it asked a lot… What is the version comparison difference between Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended? The Extended release is Adobe’s top-of-the-line Photoshop product, and they have one page on their site comparing the editions and feature differences, but the link is hidden in a corner and not obvious to find.

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[UPDATE (December 11th) – Adobe has revealed all the new features described below, they are part of Photoshop CS6.1 available exclusively to Creative Cloud members and Photoshop subscribers, and will also be included in the next formal release of the product (not CS7 but Photoshop CC)...  An update to Photoshop CS6 for HiDPI and Mac Retina Displays is also now available and free to download for all (version 13.0.4, which also includes some bug fixes).]

Check out this new “teaser” video that Adobe just slipped out entitled, See What’s Next in Photoshop coming on December 11th:

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