Design a Coffee Shop Menu Layout from Scratch with Photoshop and InDesign – Part 1 | Prism Rush Vancouver Web Design, Seo, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Graphic Design

Hi everyone, this time I’ve got for you a practical tutorial about creating a ready to print booklet menu for an imaginary coffee shop named "Violet Coffee." In this tutorial you’ll learn to mockup a ready to print background and a couple of additional objects, which will be imported later on in Adobe InDesign to finish the piece. Are you ready?

The workflow in this tutorial series is excellent preparation for creating this kind of work for clients. You can also consider putting your graphic talents to work by adding your own uniquely designed food menu template to GraphicRiver. It’s a popular and growing category to contribute to. And if you’re client project has a tight deadline or narrow budget, there are many food menu templates to choose from.

Before Getting Started

This tutorial aims to be a guide for those starting on print design, we will cover several important subjects, such as: document settings, dimensions, layout, bleed and margins, working with color, adding typography and even printing the piece.

I’ll divide it in two parts, this first one is about creating the background for the menu sheets and adding a couple of additional graphics using Adobe Photoshop, which will be imported later on into InDesign to finish the product. The second part is about adding the text elements in Adobe InDesign, mock-up a ready to print booklet style document and actually print it.

We will work within an imaginary scenario where a client "X" provide us a couple of pictures and a Word document with the coffee shop’s text and our job is to make it look nice for print.

Let’s get it started, the assets for this tutorial are:

Setting Up the Document

Remember, pen and paper first! Draft what you want to achieve and how you want to make it. Below there’s a quick draft that I did, which will be the starting point of the design. There will be two pages, front and back.

On the front page we will have the cover and back cover layout, and on the back page we will have the actual menu text. The design will be folded as a booklet. We will use violet and black colors for the background and mostly white text. The paper size may be variable, I’m thinking of a "double – letter" size, which means that each page will be an actual Letter size. It’s common to print the menus on big sizes, but depends on you. Once you have the idea of what you want to achieve, it’s time to move forward.

Step 1

We will create a single Photoshop document to mock up the backgrounds, create the image with the company name and add the cup of coffee.

Let’s start this adventure, open Photoshop and then go to File > New. First of all you need to decide which size of paper you want to use, this may vary depending on the client’s budget. This time we will start with a standard Letter Size of 8,5 x 11 inches. It’s very important to set up the resolution at this point, the minimal Print Resolution that works (in my experience) is 300 pixels/inch. And this time I’ll start working directly with CMYK Color Mode.

The cover and back cover of the booklet will be a unique piece of paper that will be folded after print. In order to make the background look nice and fluid (without undesired cutoffs), we will design it in a single document, which means duplicate the document width to convert it into a "Double Letter" piece of paper.

Duplicate the width size of the Letter paper to 17 inches (8,5 x 2). Once you double-check everything is correctly set up, hit OK.

Step 2

Now we’ve got the printable canvas, but we need to increase the design area a little bit with a security Bleed. Show the Ruler (Command + R) and add four Guides (click over the rule and drag) around the document borders, then go to Image > Canvas Size and increase the document size 1/8 inch at top, bottom, left and right. The quickest way of doing this is to add 1/4 inch (1/8 x 2) which means 0,25 inch to the canvas width and height as shown in the image below. Ensure the anchor point is located at the center and hit OK, you should have your canvas increased by 1/8 inch on all the borders.

Finally, add a Guide exactly to the horizontal center to divide the document into two columns. Use the rule to draw two more guides 1/8 inches to the left and right of the middle guide, to create something like a middle bleed area.

Designing the Background

Step 3

Let’s start with the actual graphic design. First of all we will create a Gradient Fill Layer, go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient and set the following values to the gradient colors: Violet (C:80, M:100, Y:30, and K:25), and Black (C:70, M:70, Y:70, and K:95) which is a common version of rich black and works really good. If you want to know more about using black in print design, take a look at this link: The Ultimate Guide to Designing with Black. Be sure to set the Angle to 90 degrees.

Step 4

Now add some effects to the to the background. Create a new layer above the gradient background, set the Front color to: C:80 M:70 Y:60 K:80 and the Background color as White. Now go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Change the cloud layer’s Blending Mode to Overlay.

Then, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, set the Angle to 90 degrees and Distance to 999 px. Finally adjust the Levels (Command + L) as shown at the bottom of the image below to finish the effect.

Step 5

Using the Pen Tool, draw a shape similar to the one shown in the image below. Fill the path with this color: C:10, M:15, Y:0, and K:0. To keep the layers organized I’m using Layer Groups, first create a folder named "Curves Right" and put all the curves of the right side of the canvas there.

After drawing the curve, go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All and fill it with a Horizontal Gradient (White to Black) making visible just a part of the left side of the curve. Finally change the curve Layer Opacity to 25% and set its Blending Mode to Color Dodge.

Step 6

Duplicate the Curve as many times as you want (hold the Alt key and Drag) and use the Transformation Tools to distort each duplicated curve in order to get something like the image below. You can add as many curves as you want. Try changing the opacity value on each one to obtain a nice effect.

Then select the "Curves Right" group and drag it to the right side of the canvas. Then duplicate the entire group (you can hold the Alt key and drag) and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal to reflect the curves, then select the new Group that you can name "Curves Left" and drag it to the left side of the canvas.

Step 7

Create a new layer above the "Curves." Use the Ellipse Tool (U) to draw a pink (C:5 M:55 Y:0 K:0) circle (hold the Shift key to make it perfect). Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur you’ll be asked to Rasterize the Shape, do it; set the Radius to 50px and hit OK. Next, change the circle’s Blending Mode too and the Opacity to 25%, then place it somewhere over any of the curves.

Duplicate this layer as many times as you want, changing the Opacity value and resizing each copy a little bit. Try to get something like the bottom of the image below. Once you’ve finished, put all the layers into a folder named something like "Light Spheres."

Step 8

For this step you’ll need to open the Stars Brushes set. In a new layer paint some White (C:0, M:0, Y:0, and K:0 ) stars in random places, then add an Outer Glow Layer Style using the Screen Blend Mode, with a Size of 70px and this color: C:15, M:55, Y:0, K:0. Finally set the "Stars" layer Opacity to 70%.

Adding the Name

Step 9

The following step is adding the logo, of course this cannot be named logo, since an actual logotype is a more complicated graphic design piece, so I’ll call it just "company name." Use some guides to divide the left portion of the document in two, both vertical and horizontal. Then use the Type Tool (T) to type the word "VIOLET" in all caps and in White. I’m using the commercial font Avant Garde, but feel free to use any substitute (Futura, Century Gothic, etc). Use the Character values shown below. Then select the letter "O" and change its color to: C:10, M:85, Y:0, and K:0.

Finally, as an additional effect, add to the Text Layer a Gradient Overlay Layer Style (Gray to White) and set the Blend Mode to Linear Burn, Opacity to 75%, and Angle to 90 degrees.

Step 10

Now we will add a reflect effect to the text layer, for this duplicate the text layer, rasterize it (a quick way of doing it is creating a blank layer below it, then select both the copied layer and the blank layer and press Command + E to merge them) and then go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. Place the copy just below the text. Finally, add a Layer Mask > Hide all to the copy and fill it with the Gradient Tool (Black to White).

Step 11

As a final touch, create a new Layer above the "Violet" text layer and use the Stars Brush set to paint some white stars on it. Change the Layer’s Opacity to 85%.

Step 12

Let’s type the word "coffee" in the lower right corner of the word "Violet." For this word you can use any script typeface (I’m using Edwardian Script). Now add a Gradient Overlay Layer Style using these colors: C:10, M:85, Y:0, K:0 and C:15, M:55, Y:5, K:0. Finally, put all the layers related to the company name in a Layers Group named "Logo."

Layer Comps

Step 13

Now we’ll set two Layer Comps in order to save two different versions of the design in two separate files using an Automated Script.

First show the Layer Comps panel, go to Windows > Layer Comps. Ensure the "Logo" folder is visible and on the Layer Comps panel click on the tiny New icon at the bottom, rename the new layer comp to "Cover." Then hide the "Logo" folder, and create a new Layer Comp naming it "Inner" this time. You can toggle the visibility of the layer comps to double-check everything is OK.

Step 14

Go to File > Scripts > Layer Comps to files. In the dialog, set the File Type as PSD, browse where you want to store the new files, name the resultant files with some descriptive prefix like "Violet," and leave all the other settings by default. When you hit on Run, Photoshop will automatically create a new file for each Layer Comp. The name of the new document will include the name of the Layer Comp.

Additional Graphic, a Cup of Coffee

Step 15

Open the cup of coffee image in Photoshop, double-click on the "Background" Layer to make it editable. Then use the Pen Tool in Paths mode, draw around the cup’s silhouette, once you’re finished with the path drawing, click on Exclude Overlapping Path Areas in the Options bar and draw a path inside the cup’s handler. Once you’ve got the paths drawn, go to Layer > Vector Mask > Current Path to convert the path to a vector layer mask extracting the cup from its background.

Step 16

You can drag and drop the coffee cup from its original document to our working document. Once you place it on the design, rasterize the layer if you want too, Option (Right) click on the Layer and select Rasterize Layer; name the resultant layer "coffee cup."

Then, using the same technique as in Step 10, add a reflection to the cup, but this time using a big, soft, black Brush (B) paint a little bit over the layer mask to soften the angular shades, as shown.

Step 17

As a little additional detail we will add a shadow to the cup. Use the Ellipse Tool to draw a rich black ellipse between the "coffee cup" and "coffee cup copy" layers. Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set the Radius to 35 and hit OK.

Step 18

To keep the violet ambient add a Photo Filter Adjustment Layer above the cup, ensure the Clipping Mask option on the Adjustments Panel is selected and set this color to C:40, M:80, Y:0, K:0 and Density to 25%. Now put all the coffee cup related Layers into a Layer Group named "Coffee cup."

Step 19

Now we will add a little bit of Smoke to the coffee cup. Open the Smoke image from the assets and double-click on the "Background" Layer to make it editable. Hit Command + I to invert the colors of the image. On the Hue / Saturation adjustment window (Command + U) set the Hue value to -92 to make the smoke more violet.

Let’s extract the smoke from its background. In the Channels Panel (Window > Channels) duplicate the Red channel, hit Command + A and Command + C to save the copy to the clipboard, then delete the duplicated channel, click on the RGB channel again to leave the image with its default colors.

In the Layers Panel select the smoke layer and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All, on the Layer Mask miniature, always on Layers Panel, Alt-click on the mask to show it, then Paste the clipboard on the visible Layer Mask. Then click on the actual layer miniature to see how it looks.

Step 20

Drag the smoke layer to our main document. Then rasterize it and name it "Smoke." Place it just above the cup of coffee. Add a Layer Mask to this layer and fill it with a White to Black gradient to hide the bottom of the smoke column. Use a soft black brush to paint over the layer mask to hide the top of the smoke column.

Finally, duplicate the "Smoke" layer, place the copy above the original layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, then set the radius to 35%. This will add a nice glow to the smoke layer.

Step 21

Now, in order to increase the visual impact of the coffee cup, add some lights and stars, just like we did on the background at the steps 7 and 8. Finally, put all the layers related to the coffee cup, including the smoke, the lights and stars, into a new Layer Group named "Coffee."

Exporting the Additional Graphics

Step 22

Revising, we have two important layer groups for this step: "Coffee" and "Logo." Both will be additional graphics that we will import later on into the InDesign document, so we need to export each one as a different file. Let’s start with the "Logo" group, duplicate it (drag the group over to the New button at the bottom of the Layers Panel), select the "Logo copy" group and press Command + E to rasterize it. Do exactly the same with the "Coffee" Group.

Step 23

Select the "Logo copy" layer, then Option (Right) – Click on it and select Duplicate Layer, on the popup dialog, write a name for it and select Destination of New. This will create a copy of the logo layer in a document with the same width and height as the original. Use the Crop Tool to cut all the blank space on the copy, then save the document with some descriptive name like: "Logo.psd." Repeat the process with the "Coffee copy" layer.

Resultant Files

Step 24

That’s it with Photoshop, at this point you should have the following important elements to use them on the next part of this tutorial: two PSD files with the backgrounds, one for the cover and another for the internal pages. A PSD file including the Logo with a transparent background, and another document including the coffee cup with transparent background as well.

Now we are ready to create a printable document in InDesign and add the information provided by the client.

Conclusion

At this point we have a good looking background for our menu. Now jump to Part 2 of this tutorial over on Vectortuts+ where we’ll learn more about print design.

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Alvaro Guzman | March 24, 2012

Before Getting Started

We will work within an imaginary scenario where a client "X" provide us a couple of pictures and a Word document with the coffee shop’s text and our job is to make it look nice for print.

Let’s get it started, the assets for this tutorial are:

Setting Up the Document

Step 1

We will create a single Photoshop document to mock up the backgrounds, create the image with the company name and add the cup of coffee.

Duplicate the width size of the Letter paper to 17 inches (8,5 x 2). Once you double-check everything is correctly set up, hit OK.

Step 2

Designing the Background

Step 3

Step 4

Then, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, set the Angle to 90 degrees and Distance to 999 px. Finally adjust the Levels (Command + L) as shown at the bottom of the image below to finish the effect.

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8

Adding the Name

Step 9

Finally, as an additional effect, add to the Text Layer a Gradient Overlay Layer Style (Gray to White) and set the Blend Mode to Linear Burn, Opacity to 75%, and Angle to 90 degrees.

Step 10

Step 11

As a final touch, create a new Layer above the "Violet" text layer and use the Stars Brush set to paint some white stars on it. Change the Layer’s Opacity to 85%.

Step 12

Layer Comps

Step 13

Now we’ll set two Layer Comps in order to save two different versions of the design in two separate files using an Automated Script.

Step 14

Additional Graphic, a Cup of Coffee

Step 15

Step 16

Step 17

Step 18

Step 19

Step 20

Finally, duplicate the "Smoke" layer, place the copy above the original layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, then set the radius to 35%. This will add a nice glow to the smoke layer.

Step 21

Exporting the Additional Graphics

Step 22

Step 23

Resultant Files

Step 24

Now we are ready to create a printable document in InDesign and add the information provided by the client.

Conclusion

At this point we have a good looking background for our menu. Now jump to Part 2 of this tutorial over on Vectortuts+ where we’ll learn more about print design.

Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012

Designers often work with PSD files that include hundreds, if not, thousands of layers. Managing those layers was a hassle in previous versions of Photoshop. In Photoshop CS6 however, the Photoshop team has given us some tools to help us manage our layers more efficiently. In this episode of our Introduction to Photoshop CS6 series, we will explain how to work with the new Layer Panel, and what new features and tweaks that you can expect. Let’s take a look!

Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012

Today, Adobe announced some big news. Photoshop CS6 is now available for download in Beta. For the last several months, we have been speculating about what features we can expect to see in Photoshop CS6. This speculation was fueled by the Photoshop team’s release of several sneak peek videos that revealed some exciting new features. Now that the speculation is over and Photoshop CS6 Beta is available for us to download and try, we have been able to make a careful examination of some of its new features. In this article, we will summarize some of our favorite features and discuss why we think you should make the upgrade. Let’s take a look!

Summary

Before we get started, it’s important to note that Photoshop CS6 is a major release. The Photoshop team spent a lot of time streamlining the interface, working on new features, and fixing older ones. For instance, the new interface includes over 1,800 new icons and 250 cursors. Each of these icons had to be customized to work with the new darker interface. In addition, the Photoshop team also spent some time fixing inconsistencies in the UI and rearranging menu items. This is something that hadn’t been done in over 22 years. In addition to the new interface, Photoshop CS6 now includes new performance improvements that will enable you to work faster and more efficiently.

Photoshop CS6 also includes long awaited features such as the ability to edit vectors in much the same way as you would in Illustrator, the ability to easily add strokes and dashed lines, as well as new ways to organize your layers, and let’s not forget about new background save and auto recovery features. Photoshop CS6 is a major upgrade that has more than 62% more new features than CS5 had over CS4. It also includes 65 user inspired enhancements that were a result of Adobe’s efforts to reach out to its customers through blogging and social media channels. It is changes like these that make us extremely excited share with you some of what you will see in Photoshop CS6.

Interface

Photoshop CS6 received a major overhaul of its user interface. This was the first major change to the interface since Photoshop was created over 22 years ago. It includes over 1,800 new icons and 250 new cursors and is much more consistent with other apps like Lightroom. The most prominent feature is the darker interface that allows you to focus more on the image that you’re working on. In addition, the Photoshop team also spent some time reducing some of the visual clutter that was present in some of the menu items.

New Vector Shape Layers

One of the most exciting features of Photoshop CS6 is a feature that users have been wanting forever, true vector shapes; and no, we’re not talking about the old Photoshop shape layers that use vector masks to produce the shape you need. We are talking about true vector shapes that do not require layer styles to produce a stroke or gradient. Those elements can now be quickly added to your shapes in much the same way as Illustrator.

Stroke Enhancements

In addition to the new vector shape layer feature, Photoshop CS6 will now allow you to add strokes to your vectors in a much more efficient way. You may have seen the sneak peek video explaining how to create a dashed line. The ability to add a dashed line is fantastic but Photoshop CS6 now does much more than that. You can align your stroke to the inside, outside, or to the center of your paths, and even get sharp corners, something that was really tricky to do in earlier versions.

Layer Management

If you work with PSD files that use a lot of layers, then you know how frustrating it can be to search for layers in your layer stack. Users have been asking for ways to help manage their layers for a while. The Photoshop team was listening and delivered big time. This update to the layer panel is huge! In fact, it might be one of the most important new features of the entire release. Photoshop CS6′s new layer search feature will allow you to quickly filter through your layer stack to find the layer that you are looking for. You can filter layers by kind, name, effect, mode, attribute, and color.

For instance, if you want to locate all of the pixel layers in your layer stack, you can do this easily by clicking on the pixel layer icon. You can also search for adjustment layers, text layers, shape layers, or smart objects. In addition, you can also search your layers for specific layer styles including drop shadow, bevel and emboss, etc. Another fantastic feature is the ability to search for layers that have a specific blending mode applied to them. For instance, if you needed to search for all the soft light layers in your PSD, you could do that easily with just a couple of clicks.

Background Save and Auto Recovery

As a designer, one of the worst things that can happen to you is for Photoshop to crash on you after you’ve spent hours working on a project without saving. Wouldn’t it be great if Photoshop could save your file for you automatically in the background while you work? Well, now it can! Photoshop CS6 includes background save and auto recovery. This means that you can set Photoshop to automatically save your files in the background while you work; and if there is a crash, Photoshop will automatically recover the file that you were working on.

Editor’s note: my computer locked up while working on this article. This forced me to turn off my computer to restart. When I opened Photoshop CS6 after the restart, the document that I was working on was there for me to continue working on. In this case, the Auto Recovery feature worked perfectly.

Content Aware Patch and Move Tools

When content aware fill was announced in CS5, people described it as “magical” or “impossible.” Now that we have had a couple of years to play with it, most people will probably agree that it still does a great job of removing objects from images but many people wished that they could tie it in with some other tools, like the patch tool for instance. Photoshop CS6 includes 2 new content aware features; content aware patch and content aware move.

Content aware patch will allow you to use the patch tool to grab image data from another part of your image and then blend it in with the part of the image that you want to replace.

Content aware move will allow you to move pixels to other parts of your image without having to use multiple layers.

Blur Gallery

Photoshop CS6 includes 3 new types of blur effects: field blur, iris blur, and tilt-shift blur. In addition, these new types of blur use a new HUD interface that will allow you to quickly change and adjust the settings of your blurs.

Type Styles

Adobe InDesign includes a Paragraph and Character styles feature that will allow you to quickly make changes to the appearance of text in your document. These features can be huge time savers for print designers that want to apply global changes to their text. Photoshop CS6 now includes similar Paragraph and Character styles that you can use to apply global styles to text.

New Video Timeline

One of the most surprising and exciting new features for Photoshop CS6 is the ability to work with video. Photoshop CS6 now gives us the ability to edit video in an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. In Photoshop CS6, you’ll be able to open video, edit it, apply transitions, text, and even audio. And since you’re working in Photoshop, you’ll now be able to apply many of the effects available in Photoshop’s toolset to your video, as well. This includes things like layer adjustments, filters, masks, and more.

3D

For Photoshop CS6 Extended, the Photoshop team put a lot of research into how people wanted to use 3D in their work. As a result, the 3D features in Photoshop CS6 received a significant upgrade. These changes boiled down to improvements in both performance and usability.

The 3D workspace panel, and the new property panel available in CS6 will allow you to quickly make changes to your 3D object. An improved 3D interface will also simplify your workflow by allowing you to make changes to your object simply by clicking and dragging the object around on your canvas. In addition, you’ll also be able to change the color of extruded text, and even apply warps and transformations to live text just as you might expect.

Property Panel

In this release, the Photoshop team also introduced the property panel. A smarter move tool knows what you’re clicking on and will now present you with some options to make the editing process a bit simpler.

Performance Enhancements

Photoshop CS6 also includes several performance enhancements using their new Mercury Graphics Engine. This means faster rendering for 3D, no more lag when working with Liquify.

Liquify Brush Size

Retouchers who work with large images know how annoying it is to work with a small brush in Liquify. In Photoshop CS6, the Liquify brush size has now been increased to 15,000.

All New Crop Tool

Photoshop CS6 includes an all-new crop tool. The new crop tool will allow you to quickly straighten your images using a feature that used to be incorporated into the ruler tool, allow you to constrain your crops using user created presets, the ability to quickly toggle your crop between landscape and portrait orientation, a way to view your crop using different grid views, auto centering and much more.

Brushes

If you’re a digital painter or frequently use brushes in your work, Photoshop CS6 includes 2 new brush types; brushes with erodible tips, as well as airbrush brushes. Erodible tip brushes behave in a way similar to charcoal pencils. The tip of the brush will slowly erode as you draw. The airbrush brush will give your work a realistic airbrush effect.

Adaptive Wide Angle

Adaptive Wide Angle is a feature that the Adobe team explained at a sneak peek event in New York City before the release of the Beta. Adaptive Wide Angle will allow you to correct lens distortion from a photograph taken using a wide-angle lens.

Photo by BruceW.

Preset Sharing

In Adobe Photoshop CS6, sharing your presets between computers, coworkers, and friends has never been easier. Preset sharing will allow you to quickly export your brushes, presets, patterns, workspaces, and more between computers or even different versions of Photoshop.

Skin Aware Selections

This slightly obscure feature will allow you to detect skin tones by going to Select > Color Range > then by selecting Skin Tones from the drop down menu. You can even ask it to detect faces.

Auto Adjustments

Photoshop CS6 now supports an auto feature for Levels, Curves, and Brightness/Contrast.

Scripted Patterns

In Adobe Photoshop CS6 you can now apply scripts to your patterns to get them to fill your canvas in new ways including Brick Fill, Cross Weave, Random Fill, Random Fill, Spiral, and Symmetry Fill.

JDIs

JDI stands for “Just Do It,” in Photoshop CS6, the developers were given some time to work on small new features and fix older ones. Below is a list of each JDI that was completed for Photoshop CS6.

Brushes

HUD brush resize and hardness can now change opacity
Increase brush size to 5000px
Change color dynamics to per stroke instead of per tip (user option for old behavior)
Brightness/contrast slider for textures when painting
Brush projection for static tips
Brush cursor reflects brush dynamics for round and captured tips
Eyedropper
Show the sample size popup for the various eyedropper tools (black point, white point, etc.)
Add ignore adjustment layers options bar item for the eyedropper
New mode for eyedropper to select layers current and below

File formats

Read common stereo image pair formats (JPS, PNS) Allow for more bit depths in TIFF files
Read BIGTIFF format
Give the user choices regarding how they want transparency treated in OpenEXR on file open

Grammar

Policed throughout app
Use consistent grammar style in the title of dialog windows (no commands such as "Choose a color:")

Layers

Add a contextual menu item that deletes a layer effect not just disables it
Add dither options to Layer Styles for Gradient Overlay and Gradient Stroke
Allow 00 or Shift 00 to work when setting layer/fill opacity (previously no way to get 0%)
Add bicubic sharper & bicubic smoother options when free transforming layers
Allow changing of blend modes for multiple layers at once
Allow locking of multiple layers
o CMD+J to duplicate layers and layer group
Allow changing color labels to multiple layers at once
Layer tooltips to include layer name (if defined)
Opt+click on toggle arrows (groups and effects) in layer panel should close all targets
Show blend if/Blending Effects badge on layer
Show correct opacity and blend mode values for hidden layers
Tab goes to next layer on inline layer rename, SHIFT + TAB goes to previous
New command to raster layer effect into layer, merging the selected layers into themselves
Reorder effects in the layers palette to match the Z-order style/blend mode (bottom most effects in terms
of blending order, drop shadow is below the other effects

Liquify

Resize Liquify brush with shortcuts
Increase maximum Liquify brush size Add option to load last mesh

Presets

Add new document presets for common devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad, etc.)
Add new Gradient Map presets for toning and split-toning
Sticky reorganization of tool presets (changes persist after re-launch) Add Contact Sheet II as an Automation option

SDK

Add the ability to return an array of guides in a document from the scripting SDK
Add ability to access tool name associated with the tool preset name via scripting
Selections
Make the marquee, lasso, and mask panel feather values support decimal places like the feather dialog
Remember feather radius when showing dialog for selection from a path

Transform

Improve dragging of vector curves
Don’t hide smart object icon when transforming a layer
Rotate 90 with even x odd pixel dimension to be smooth (bjango.com)
Undo or disable auto -rotate on open

UI

Remove the app bar and reduce the drag/app bar over 30%
[Windows] New/open document to context click on a document tab (has always been on Mac, now
on Windows too)
Add "Don’t show again" checkbox to Purge warnings

Miscellaneous

Enable Split Channels for documents with layers
Select Hex field by default and allow clipboard pastes with # in contents (i.e. #fffffff)
Increased GPU stability by prequalifying GPUs on the fly before use
Auto-select the best resample method based on the type of resize
Enable Invert and Threshold adjustments for masks in 32 -bit
Hold SHIFT during startup to disable 3rd party plugins
Add warning message that 16 -bit images cannot display their file size in the Save as JPEG dialog
Add command to insert "lorem ipsum" for type

System Requirements

If you are wondering about the system requirements for Photoshop CS6, here are some additional details:

1GB of RAM.
2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation.
1024×768 (1280×800 recommended) resolution display with 16-bit color and 256MB (512MB recommended, required for Photoshop Extended) of VRAM.
OpenGL 2.0 capable system.
DVD-ROM drive.
Internet connection and registration required for software activation. This software will not operate without activation. Broadband Internet connection required for online services.
Some GPU enabled features and 3D features are not supported on Windows XP.

Conclusion

Whenever Adobe releases a new version of its Creative Suite, designers often have to decide whether or not it makes sense to upgrade. We personally know a lot of designers who decided to skip CS5. For them, CS5 didn’t include enough new features and just wasn’t worth the upgrade. After taking a careful look at Photoshop CS6, we have decided that it is certainly worth an upgrade.

Photoshop CS6 is packed with new features and tweaks that will significantly improve your workflow and enhance your toolset. Notable new features include a revamped 3D workspace (in Photoshop CS6 Extended), layer management tools, background save and auto recovery, vector and stroke enhancements, as well as a new video editing timeline, as well as a brand new crop tool. Photographers and retouchers will also enjoy working with the enhanced Liquify tools, as well as the new Adaptive Wide Angle filter.

Photoshop CS6 includes is a significant improvement over Photoshop CS5 and is by far the best version of Photoshop to date. While the decision to upgrade is yours, we believe that you should definitely download Photoshop CS6 and give it a try when it is available. Once you’ve had some time to work with it, we think you will be as impressed as we are.

What Do You Think?

Now that we’ve had our say. What do you think? What features are you looking forward to? Will you make the upgrade?

Martin Perhiniak | March 24, 2012

Photoshop is an excellent tool for manipulating photographs but it can also be used as a means to create stunning digital art. This tutorial is part of a 25-part video tutorial series demonstrating everything you will need to know to start producing digital art in Photoshop. Digital Art for Beginners, by Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, Martin Perhiniak will begin by teaching you how to draw in Photoshop. At the conclusion of this series you will know all you need to produce your own concept art and matte paintings in Photoshop.

Today’s tutorial Part 25: Paint a Castle in Photoshop – Part 2 we will continue to work on our castle painting from Part 1, focusing on the details. Let’s get started!

Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012

Are you looking for a place to host your new or current website? If so, our friends at Eleven2 are offering Psdtuts+ readers 68% off their shared (S-200) hosting package and 53% off their reseller (R-100) package for the first year. To take advantage of this fantastic designer hosting special, all you have to do is Sign Up before March 31, 2012 at 11:59 PM EST.

Designer Hosting – $30

Calling all Designers! Looking to host your blog, portfolio or personal website? Then look no further, as Eleven2 is giving you a massive 68% off hosting for one year!

You get a fantastic 250 GB storage space, and 20 TB monthly bandwidth! With the ability to host an unlimited amount of websites too! We can even help you transfer your website over to us! Sign Up today before the deal ends! (select annual billing on checkout).

Pick Your Server Location – USA (signup) – Europe (signup) – Asia (signup)

Designer Reseller Hosting – $100

Looking to start your own hosting company? Or want to offer hosting to your clients? Eleven2′s designer’s reseller special will save you a massive 53% off our yearly reseller hosting price!

Eleven2 provides you with free billing software (ClientExec or WHMCS), gives you a free dedicated IP address, and you will get 100 GB of storage and 1,000 GB of monthly bandwidth! Sign Up today before the deal ends! (select annual billing on checkout).

Pick Your Server Location – USA (signup) – Europe (signup)

About Eleven2

Eleven2 is a web hosting provider comprised of talented designers, developers, musicians, film makers, business owners, writers, photographers, and much more. Team members are a lot like you, making it easier for us to understand and deliver exactly what it is that you need. With worldwide hosting locations, you’ll be proud to call them your hosting provider. If you would like to learn more about Eleven2, please visit their website.

Editor’s note: This article was sponsored by Eleven2.

Martin Perhiniak | March 24, 2012

We know how much you guys like to test your knowledge of Photoshop so today we are giving you an opportunity to do so with another quiz from Martin Perhiniak. Please take a moment to complete this 10-question quiz and see if you’re prepared to pass our test! Good luck!

Editor’s note: this quiz is for Photoshop CS5.

Josh Dykgraaf | March 24, 2012

Taking your own photos and combining them into an entirely new composition can be quite satisfying. In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial, author Josh Dykgraaf will show you how to create a walking city using a combination of photos that were taken exclusively for this project, as well as a few stock photos. The result will be reminiscent of a Star Wars walker. This tutorial is available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium Members. If you are looking to take your photo manipulation skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!

View the Tutorial

Tuts+ Premium Members can login now for instant access to this tutorial. Membership to Tuts+ Premium gets you access to hundreds of exclusive premium tutorials, top selling ebooks, in-depth courses, member forums, and much more. To learn more about Tuts+ Premium, Take the Tour or Join Today.

Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012

Dan Scott is a digital painter and concept artist from Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He has painted pieces for DC Comics, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer, and World of Warcraft. In this article we will feature some of our favorite World of Warcraft concepts from his portfolio. Let’s take a look!

Scout Kurgo

Harnum Firebelly

Landro Longshot

Zophos the Vengeful

Inventor Dorbin Callus

Blessings of the Heavens

Kinivus

Shalu Stormshatter

Ryno the Wicked

Beast Within, The

Defender Nagalaas

Enslave Demon

Sarlia

Exarch Orelis

Invisibility

Remba, Abbess of Ash

Squish Together

Marksman Boriz

Izza Spindleflame

Drek’Thar

Mazar

Snarl Hellwind

Pidge Filthfinder

Natural Alignment Crystal

Dan Scott On the Web

You can see more of Scott’s work on his website.

Michael Rather | March 24, 2012

Changing your camera lenses out in the field can cause your sensor to accumulate unwanted dust spots that eventually show up on your images. In this quick tip tutorial we will explain how you can easily remove these dust spots from your images using just a couple of basic tools available in Photoshop CS5. Let’s get started!

Emil Agarunov | March 24, 2012

In this article we will feature a collection of eye-popping sports car illustrations. These illustrations include everything from concept cars to recreations of classics. Let’s take a look!

Velocity

We start off with a stunning painting of a racecar. The overall piece is painted realistically and the extra colors added from the speed of the car work well with the overall tone.

Neglected Beatle

This painting features an old and not so glamorous car but the artist really does a wonderful job with the overall environment and color selection.

10 Comments

Alvaro Guzman | March 24, 2012
Hi everyone, this time I’ve got for you a practical tutorial about creating a ready to print booklet menu for an imaginary coffee shop named "Violet Coffee." In this tutorial you’ll learn to mockup a ready to print background and a couple of additional objects, which will be imported later on in Adobe InDesign to finish the piece. Are you ready?

The workflow in this tutorial series is excellent preparation for creating this kind of work for clients. You can also consider putting your graphic talents to work by adding your own uniquely designed food menu template to GraphicRiver. It’s a popular and growing category to contribute to. And if you’re client project has a tight deadline or narrow budget, there are many food menu templates to choose from.

Before Getting Started

This tutorial aims to be a guide for those starting on print design, we will cover several important subjects, such as: document settings, dimensions, layout, bleed and margins, working with color, adding typography and even printing the piece.

I’ll divide it in two parts, this first one is about creating the background for the menu sheets and adding a couple of additional graphics using Adobe Photoshop, which will be imported later on into InDesign to finish the product. The second part is about adding the text elements in Adobe InDesign, mock-up a ready to print booklet style document and actually print it.

We will work within an imaginary scenario where a client "X" provide us a couple of pictures and a Word document with the coffee shop’s text and our job is to make it look nice for print.

Let’s get it started, the assets for this tutorial are:
- A cup of coffee
- Smoke
- Star Brushes of jen-ni
Setting Up the Document

Remember, pen and paper first! Draft what you want to achieve and how you want to make it. Below there’s a quick draft that I did, which will be the starting point of the design. There will be two pages, front and back.

On the front page we will have the cover and back cover layout, and on the back page we will have the actual menu text. The design will be folded as a booklet. We will use violet and black colors for the background and mostly white text. The paper size may be variable, I’m thinking of a "double – letter" size, which means that each page will be an actual Letter size. It’s common to print the menus on big sizes, but depends on you. Once you have the idea of what you want to achieve, it’s time to move forward.

Step 1

We will create a single Photoshop document to mock up the backgrounds, create the image with the company name and add the cup of coffee.

Let’s start this adventure, open Photoshop and then go to File > New. First of all you need to decide which size of paper you want to use, this may vary depending on the client’s budget. This time we will start with a standard Letter Size of 8,5 x 11 inches. It’s very important to set up the resolution at this point, the minimal Print Resolution that works (in my experience) is 300 pixels/inch. And this time I’ll start working directly with CMYK Color Mode.

The cover and back cover of the booklet will be a unique piece of paper that will be folded after print. In order to make the background look nice and fluid (without undesired cutoffs), we will design it in a single document, which means duplicate the document width to convert it into a "Double Letter" piece of paper.

Duplicate the width size of the Letter paper to 17 inches (8,5 x 2). Once you double-check everything is correctly set up, hit OK.

Step 2

Now we’ve got the printable canvas, but we need to increase the design area a little bit with a security Bleed. Show the Ruler (Command + R) and add four Guides (click over the rule and drag) around the document borders, then go to Image > Canvas Size and increase the document size 1/8 inch at top, bottom, left and right. The quickest way of doing this is to add 1/4 inch (1/8 x 2) which means 0,25 inch to the canvas width and height as shown in the image below. Ensure the anchor point is located at the center and hit OK, you should have your canvas increased by 1/8 inch on all the borders.

Finally, add a Guide exactly to the horizontal center to divide the document into two columns. Use the rule to draw two more guides 1/8 inches to the left and right of the middle guide, to create something like a middle bleed area.

Designing the Background

Step 3

Let’s start with the actual graphic design. First of all we will create a Gradient Fill Layer, go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient and set the following values to the gradient colors: Violet (C:80, M:100, Y:30, and K:25), and Black (C:70, M:70, Y:70, and K:95) which is a common version of rich black and works really good. If you want to know more about using black in print design, take a look at this link: The Ultimate Guide to Designing with Black. Be sure to set the Angle to 90 degrees.

Step 4

Now add some effects to the to the background. Create a new layer above the gradient background, set the Front color to: C:80 M:70 Y:60 K:80 and the Background color as White. Now go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Change the cloud layer’s Blending Mode to Overlay.

Then, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, set the Angle to 90 degrees and Distance to 999 px. Finally adjust the Levels (Command + L) as shown at the bottom of the image below to finish the effect.

Step 5

Using the Pen Tool, draw a shape similar to the one shown in the image below. Fill the path with this color: C:10, M:15, Y:0, and K:0. To keep the layers organized I’m using Layer Groups, first create a folder named "Curves Right" and put all the curves of the right side of the canvas there.

After drawing the curve, go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All and fill it with a Horizontal Gradient (White to Black) making visible just a part of the left side of the curve. Finally change the curve Layer Opacity to 25% and set its Blending Mode to Color Dodge.

Step 6

Duplicate the Curve as many times as you want (hold the Alt key and Drag) and use the Transformation Tools to distort each duplicated curve in order to get something like the image below. You can add as many curves as you want. Try changing the opacity value on each one to obtain a nice effect.

Then select the "Curves Right" group and drag it to the right side of the canvas. Then duplicate the entire group (you can hold the Alt key and drag) and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal to reflect the curves, then select the new Group that you can name "Curves Left" and drag it to the left side of the canvas.

Step 7

Create a new layer above the "Curves." Use the Ellipse Tool (U) to draw a pink (C:5 M:55 Y:0 K:0) circle (hold the Shift key to make it perfect). Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur you’ll be asked to Rasterize the Shape, do it; set the Radius to 50px and hit OK. Next, change the circle’s Blending Mode too and the Opacity to 25%, then place it somewhere over any of the curves.

Duplicate this layer as many times as you want, changing the Opacity value and resizing each copy a little bit. Try to get something like the bottom of the image below. Once you’ve finished, put all the layers into a folder named something like "Light Spheres."

Step 8

For this step you’ll need to open the Stars Brushes set. In a new layer paint some White (C:0, M:0, Y:0, and K:0 ) stars in random places, then add an Outer Glow Layer Style using the Screen Blend Mode, with a Size of 70px and this color: C:15, M:55, Y:0, K:0. Finally set the "Stars" layer Opacity to 70%.

Adding the Name

Step 9

The following step is adding the logo, of course this cannot be named logo, since an actual logotype is a more complicated graphic design piece, so I’ll call it just "company name." Use some guides to divide the left portion of the document in two, both vertical and horizontal. Then use the Type Tool (T) to type the word "VIOLET" in all caps and in White. I’m using the commercial font Avant Garde, but feel free to use any substitute (Futura, Century Gothic, etc). Use the Character values shown below. Then select the letter "O" and change its color to: C:10, M:85, Y:0, and K:0.

Finally, as an additional effect, add to the Text Layer a Gradient Overlay Layer Style (Gray to White) and set the Blend Mode to Linear Burn, Opacity to 75%, and Angle to 90 degrees.

Step 10

Now we will add a reflect effect to the text layer, for this duplicate the text layer, rasterize it (a quick way of doing it is creating a blank layer below it, then select both the copied layer and the blank layer and press Command + E to merge them) and then go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. Place the copy just below the text. Finally, add a Layer Mask > Hide all to the copy and fill it with the Gradient Tool (Black to White).

Step 11

As a final touch, create a new Layer above the "Violet" text layer and use the Stars Brush set to paint some white stars on it. Change the Layer’s Opacity to 85%.

Step 12

Let’s type the word "coffee" in the lower right corner of the word "Violet." For this word you can use any script typeface (I’m using Edwardian Script). Now add a Gradient Overlay Layer Style using these colors: C:10, M:85, Y:0, K:0 and C:15, M:55, Y:5, K:0. Finally, put all the layers related to the company name in a Layers Group named "Logo."

Layer Comps

Step 13

Now we’ll set two Layer Comps in order to save two different versions of the design in two separate files using an Automated Script.

First show the Layer Comps panel, go to Windows > Layer Comps. Ensure the "Logo" folder is visible and on the Layer Comps panel click on the tiny New icon at the bottom, rename the new layer comp to "Cover." Then hide the "Logo" folder, and create a new Layer Comp naming it "Inner" this time. You can toggle the visibility of the layer comps to double-check everything is OK.

Step 14

Go to File > Scripts > Layer Comps to files. In the dialog, set the File Type as PSD, browse where you want to store the new files, name the resultant files with some descriptive prefix like "Violet," and leave all the other settings by default. When you hit on Run, Photoshop will automatically create a new file for each Layer Comp. The name of the new document will include the name of the Layer Comp.

Additional Graphic, a Cup of Coffee

Step 15

Open the cup of coffee image in Photoshop, double-click on the "Background" Layer to make it editable. Then use the Pen Tool in Paths mode, draw around the cup’s silhouette, once you’re finished with the path drawing, click on Exclude Overlapping Path Areas in the Options bar and draw a path inside the cup’s handler. Once you’ve got the paths drawn, go to Layer > Vector Mask > Current Path to convert the path to a vector layer mask extracting the cup from its background.

Step 16

You can drag and drop the coffee cup from its original document to our working document. Once you place it on the design, rasterize the layer if you want too, Option (Right) click on the Layer and select Rasterize Layer; name the resultant layer "coffee cup."

Then, using the same technique as in Step 10, add a reflection to the cup, but this time using a big, soft, black Brush (B) paint a little bit over the layer mask to soften the angular shades, as shown.

Step 17

As a little additional detail we will add a shadow to the cup. Use the Ellipse Tool to draw a rich black ellipse between the "coffee cup" and "coffee cup copy" layers. Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set the Radius to 35 and hit OK.

Step 18

To keep the violet ambient add a Photo Filter Adjustment Layer above the cup, ensure the Clipping Mask option on the Adjustments Panel is selected and set this color to C:40, M:80, Y:0, K:0 and Density to 25%. Now put all the coffee cup related Layers into a Layer Group named "Coffee cup."

Step 19

Now we will add a little bit of Smoke to the coffee cup. Open the Smoke image from the assets and double-click on the "Background" Layer to make it editable. Hit Command + I to invert the colors of the image. On the Hue / Saturation adjustment window (Command + U) set the Hue value to -92 to make the smoke more violet.

Let’s extract the smoke from its background. In the Channels Panel (Window > Channels) duplicate the Red channel, hit Command + A and Command + C to save the copy to the clipboard, then delete the duplicated channel, click on the RGB channel again to leave the image with its default colors.

In the Layers Panel select the smoke layer and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All, on the Layer Mask miniature, always on Layers Panel, Alt-click on the mask to show it, then Paste the clipboard on the visible Layer Mask. Then click on the actual layer miniature to see how it looks.

Step 20

Drag the smoke layer to our main document. Then rasterize it and name it "Smoke." Place it just above the cup of coffee. Add a Layer Mask to this layer and fill it with a White to Black gradient to hide the bottom of the smoke column. Use a soft black brush to paint over the layer mask to hide the top of the smoke column.

Finally, duplicate the "Smoke" layer, place the copy above the original layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, then set the radius to 35%. This will add a nice glow to the smoke layer.

Step 21

Now, in order to increase the visual impact of the coffee cup, add some lights and stars, just like we did on the background at the steps 7 and 8. Finally, put all the layers related to the coffee cup, including the smoke, the lights and stars, into a new Layer Group named "Coffee."

Exporting the Additional Graphics

Step 22

Revising, we have two important layer groups for this step: "Coffee" and "Logo." Both will be additional graphics that we will import later on into the InDesign document, so we need to export each one as a different file. Let’s start with the "Logo" group, duplicate it (drag the group over to the New button at the bottom of the Layers Panel), select the "Logo copy" group and press Command + E to rasterize it. Do exactly the same with the "Coffee" Group.

Step 23

Select the "Logo copy" layer, then Option (Right) – Click on it and select Duplicate Layer, on the popup dialog, write a name for it and select Destination of New. This will create a copy of the logo layer in a document with the same width and height as the original. Use the Crop Tool to cut all the blank space on the copy, then save the document with some descriptive name like: "Logo.psd." Repeat the process with the "Coffee copy" layer.

Resultant Files

Step 24

That’s it with Photoshop, at this point you should have the following important elements to use them on the next part of this tutorial: two PSD files with the backgrounds, one for the cover and another for the internal pages. A PSD file including the Logo with a transparent background, and another document including the coffee cup with transparent background as well.

Now we are ready to create a printable document in InDesign and add the information provided by the client.

Conclusion

At this point we have a good looking background for our menu. Now jump to Part 2 of this tutorial over on Vectortuts+ where we’ll learn more about print design.

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Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012

Designers often work with PSD files that include hundreds, if not, thousands of layers. Managing those layers was a hassle in previous versions of Photoshop. In Photoshop CS6 however, the Photoshop team has given us some tools to help us manage our layers more efficiently. In this episode of our Introduction to Photoshop CS6 series, we will explain how to work with the new Layer Panel, and what new features and tweaks that you can expect. Let’s take a look!
Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012
Today, Adobe announced some big news. Photoshop CS6 is now available for download in Beta. For the last several months, we have been speculating about what features we can expect to see in Photoshop CS6. This speculation was fueled by the Photoshop team’s release of several sneak peek videos that revealed some exciting new features. Now that the speculation is over and Photoshop CS6 Beta is available for us to download and try, we have been able to make a careful examination of some of its new features. In this article, we will summarize some of our favorite features and discuss why we think you should make the upgrade. Let’s take a look!

Summary

Before we get started, it’s important to note that Photoshop CS6 is a major release. The Photoshop team spent a lot of time streamlining the interface, working on new features, and fixing older ones. For instance, the new interface includes over 1,800 new icons and 250 cursors. Each of these icons had to be customized to work with the new darker interface. In addition, the Photoshop team also spent some time fixing inconsistencies in the UI and rearranging menu items. This is something that hadn’t been done in over 22 years. In addition to the new interface, Photoshop CS6 now includes new performance improvements that will enable you to work faster and more efficiently.

Photoshop CS6 also includes long awaited features such as the ability to edit vectors in much the same way as you would in Illustrator, the ability to easily add strokes and dashed lines, as well as new ways to organize your layers, and let’s not forget about new background save and auto recovery features. Photoshop CS6 is a major upgrade that has more than 62% more new features than CS5 had over CS4. It also includes 65 user inspired enhancements that were a result of Adobe’s efforts to reach out to its customers through blogging and social media channels. It is changes like these that make us extremely excited share with you some of what you will see in Photoshop CS6.

Interface

Photoshop CS6 received a major overhaul of its user interface. This was the first major change to the interface since Photoshop was created over 22 years ago. It includes over 1,800 new icons and 250 new cursors and is much more consistent with other apps like Lightroom. The most prominent feature is the darker interface that allows you to focus more on the image that you’re working on. In addition, the Photoshop team also spent some time reducing some of the visual clutter that was present in some of the menu items.

New Vector Shape Layers

One of the most exciting features of Photoshop CS6 is a feature that users have been wanting forever, true vector shapes; and no, we’re not talking about the old Photoshop shape layers that use vector masks to produce the shape you need. We are talking about true vector shapes that do not require layer styles to produce a stroke or gradient. Those elements can now be quickly added to your shapes in much the same way as Illustrator.

Stroke Enhancements

In addition to the new vector shape layer feature, Photoshop CS6 will now allow you to add strokes to your vectors in a much more efficient way. You may have seen the sneak peek video explaining how to create a dashed line. The ability to add a dashed line is fantastic but Photoshop CS6 now does much more than that. You can align your stroke to the inside, outside, or to the center of your paths, and even get sharp corners, something that was really tricky to do in earlier versions.

Layer Management

If you work with PSD files that use a lot of layers, then you know how frustrating it can be to search for layers in your layer stack. Users have been asking for ways to help manage their layers for a while. The Photoshop team was listening and delivered big time. This update to the layer panel is huge! In fact, it might be one of the most important new features of the entire release. Photoshop CS6′s new layer search feature will allow you to quickly filter through your layer stack to find the layer that you are looking for. You can filter layers by kind, name, effect, mode, attribute, and color.

For instance, if you want to locate all of the pixel layers in your layer stack, you can do this easily by clicking on the pixel layer icon. You can also search for adjustment layers, text layers, shape layers, or smart objects. In addition, you can also search your layers for specific layer styles including drop shadow, bevel and emboss, etc. Another fantastic feature is the ability to search for layers that have a specific blending mode applied to them. For instance, if you needed to search for all the soft light layers in your PSD, you could do that easily with just a couple of clicks.

Background Save and Auto Recovery

As a designer, one of the worst things that can happen to you is for Photoshop to crash on you after you’ve spent hours working on a project without saving. Wouldn’t it be great if Photoshop could save your file for you automatically in the background while you work? Well, now it can! Photoshop CS6 includes background save and auto recovery. This means that you can set Photoshop to automatically save your files in the background while you work; and if there is a crash, Photoshop will automatically recover the file that you were working on.

Editor’s note: my computer locked up while working on this article. This forced me to turn off my computer to restart. When I opened Photoshop CS6 after the restart, the document that I was working on was there for me to continue working on. In this case, the Auto Recovery feature worked perfectly.

Content Aware Patch and Move Tools

When content aware fill was announced in CS5, people described it as “magical” or “impossible.” Now that we have had a couple of years to play with it, most people will probably agree that it still does a great job of removing objects from images but many people wished that they could tie it in with some other tools, like the patch tool for instance. Photoshop CS6 includes 2 new content aware features; content aware patch and content aware move.

Content aware patch will allow you to use the patch tool to grab image data from another part of your image and then blend it in with the part of the image that you want to replace.

Content aware move will allow you to move pixels to other parts of your image without having to use multiple layers.

Blur Gallery

Photoshop CS6 includes 3 new types of blur effects: field blur, iris blur, and tilt-shift blur. In addition, these new types of blur use a new HUD interface that will allow you to quickly change and adjust the settings of your blurs.

Type Styles

Adobe InDesign includes a Paragraph and Character styles feature that will allow you to quickly make changes to the appearance of text in your document. These features can be huge time savers for print designers that want to apply global changes to their text. Photoshop CS6 now includes similar Paragraph and Character styles that you can use to apply global styles to text.

New Video Timeline

One of the most surprising and exciting new features for Photoshop CS6 is the ability to work with video. Photoshop CS6 now gives us the ability to edit video in an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. In Photoshop CS6, you’ll be able to open video, edit it, apply transitions, text, and even audio. And since you’re working in Photoshop, you’ll now be able to apply many of the effects available in Photoshop’s toolset to your video, as well. This includes things like layer adjustments, filters, masks, and more.

3D

For Photoshop CS6 Extended, the Photoshop team put a lot of research into how people wanted to use 3D in their work. As a result, the 3D features in Photoshop CS6 received a significant upgrade. These changes boiled down to improvements in both performance and usability.

The 3D workspace panel, and the new property panel available in CS6 will allow you to quickly make changes to your 3D object. An improved 3D interface will also simplify your workflow by allowing you to make changes to your object simply by clicking and dragging the object around on your canvas. In addition, you’ll also be able to change the color of extruded text, and even apply warps and transformations to live text just as you might expect.

Property Panel

In this release, the Photoshop team also introduced the property panel. A smarter move tool knows what you’re clicking on and will now present you with some options to make the editing process a bit simpler.

Performance Enhancements

Photoshop CS6 also includes several performance enhancements using their new Mercury Graphics Engine. This means faster rendering for 3D, no more lag when working with Liquify.

Liquify Brush Size

Retouchers who work with large images know how annoying it is to work with a small brush in Liquify. In Photoshop CS6, the Liquify brush size has now been increased to 15,000.

All New Crop Tool

Photoshop CS6 includes an all-new crop tool. The new crop tool will allow you to quickly straighten your images using a feature that used to be incorporated into the ruler tool, allow you to constrain your crops using user created presets, the ability to quickly toggle your crop between landscape and portrait orientation, a way to view your crop using different grid views, auto centering and much more.

Brushes

If you’re a digital painter or frequently use brushes in your work, Photoshop CS6 includes 2 new brush types; brushes with erodible tips, as well as airbrush brushes. Erodible tip brushes behave in a way similar to charcoal pencils. The tip of the brush will slowly erode as you draw. The airbrush brush will give your work a realistic airbrush effect.

Adaptive Wide Angle

Adaptive Wide Angle is a feature that the Adobe team explained at a sneak peek event in New York City before the release of the Beta. Adaptive Wide Angle will allow you to correct lens distortion from a photograph taken using a wide-angle lens.

Photo by BruceW.

Preset Sharing

In Adobe Photoshop CS6, sharing your presets between computers, coworkers, and friends has never been easier. Preset sharing will allow you to quickly export your brushes, presets, patterns, workspaces, and more between computers or even different versions of Photoshop.

Skin Aware Selections

This slightly obscure feature will allow you to detect skin tones by going to Select > Color Range > then by selecting Skin Tones from the drop down menu. You can even ask it to detect faces.

Auto Adjustments

Photoshop CS6 now supports an auto feature for Levels, Curves, and Brightness/Contrast.

Scripted Patterns

In Adobe Photoshop CS6 you can now apply scripts to your patterns to get them to fill your canvas in new ways including Brick Fill, Cross Weave, Random Fill, Random Fill, Spiral, and Symmetry Fill.

JDIs

JDI stands for “Just Do It,” in Photoshop CS6, the developers were given some time to work on small new features and fix older ones. Below is a list of each JDI that was completed for Photoshop CS6.

Brushes
- HUD brush resize and hardness can now change opacity
- Increase brush size to 5000px
- Change color dynamics to per stroke instead of per tip (user option for old behavior)
- Brightness/contrast slider for textures when painting
- Brush projection for static tips
- Brush cursor reflects brush dynamics for round and captured tips
  Eyedropper
- Show the sample size popup for the various eyedropper tools (black point, white point, etc.)
- Add ignore adjustment layers options bar item for the eyedropper
- New mode for eyedropper to select layers current and below
File formats
- Read common stereo image pair formats (JPS, PNS) Allow for more bit depths in TIFF files
- Read BIGTIFF format
- Give the user choices regarding how they want transparency treated in OpenEXR on file open
Grammar
- Policed throughout app
- Use consistent grammar style in the title of dialog windows (no commands such as "Choose a color:")
Layers
- Add a contextual menu item that deletes a layer effect not just disables it
- Add dither options to Layer Styles for Gradient Overlay and Gradient Stroke
- Allow 00 or Shift 00 to work when setting layer/fill opacity (previously no way to get 0%)
- Add bicubic sharper & bicubic smoother options when free transforming layers
- Allow changing of blend modes for multiple layers at once
- Allow locking of multiple layers
  o CMD+J to duplicate layers and layer group
- Allow changing color labels to multiple layers at once
- Layer tooltips to include layer name (if defined)
- Opt+click on toggle arrows (groups and effects) in layer panel should close all targets
- Show blend if/Blending Effects badge on layer
- Show correct opacity and blend mode values for hidden layers
- Tab goes to next layer on inline layer rename, SHIFT + TAB goes to previous
- New command to raster layer effect into layer, merging the selected layers into themselves
- Reorder effects in the layers palette to match the Z-order style/blend mode (bottom most effects in terms
  of blending order, drop shadow is below the other effects
Liquify
- Resize Liquify brush with shortcuts
- Increase maximum Liquify brush size Add option to load last mesh
Presets
- Add new document presets for common devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad, etc.)
- Add new Gradient Map presets for toning and split-toning
- Sticky reorganization of tool presets (changes persist after re-launch) Add Contact Sheet II as an Automation option
SDK
- Add the ability to return an array of guides in a document from the scripting SDK
- Add ability to access tool name associated with the tool preset name via scripting
  Selections
- Make the marquee, lasso, and mask panel feather values support decimal places like the feather dialog
- Remember feather radius when showing dialog for selection from a path
Transform
- Improve dragging of vector curves
- Don’t hide smart object icon when transforming a layer
- Rotate 90 with even x odd pixel dimension to be smooth (bjango.com)
- Undo or disable auto -rotate on open
UI
- Remove the app bar and reduce the drag/app bar over 30%
- [Windows] New/open document to context click on a document tab (has always been on Mac, now
  on Windows too)
- Add "Don’t show again" checkbox to Purge warnings
Miscellaneous
- Enable Split Channels for documents with layers
- Select Hex field by default and allow clipboard pastes with # in contents (i.e. #fffffff)
- Increased GPU stability by prequalifying GPUs on the fly before use
- Auto-select the best resample method based on the type of resize
- Enable Invert and Threshold adjustments for masks in 32 -bit
- Hold SHIFT during startup to disable 3rd party plugins
- Add warning message that 16 -bit images cannot display their file size in the Save as JPEG dialog
- Add command to insert "lorem ipsum" for type
System Requirements

If you are wondering about the system requirements for Photoshop CS6, here are some additional details:
- 1GB of RAM.
- 2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation.
- 1024×768 (1280×800 recommended) resolution display with 16-bit color and 256MB (512MB recommended, required for Photoshop Extended) of VRAM.
- OpenGL 2.0 capable system.
- DVD-ROM drive.
- Internet connection and registration required for software activation. This software will not operate without activation. Broadband Internet connection required for online services.
- Some GPU enabled features and 3D features are not supported on Windows XP.
Conclusion

Whenever Adobe releases a new version of its Creative Suite, designers often have to decide whether or not it makes sense to upgrade. We personally know a lot of designers who decided to skip CS5. For them, CS5 didn’t include enough new features and just wasn’t worth the upgrade. After taking a careful look at Photoshop CS6, we have decided that it is certainly worth an upgrade.

Photoshop CS6 is packed with new features and tweaks that will significantly improve your workflow and enhance your toolset. Notable new features include a revamped 3D workspace (in Photoshop CS6 Extended), layer management tools, background save and auto recovery, vector and stroke enhancements, as well as a new video editing timeline, as well as a brand new crop tool. Photographers and retouchers will also enjoy working with the enhanced Liquify tools, as well as the new Adaptive Wide Angle filter.

Photoshop CS6 includes is a significant improvement over Photoshop CS5 and is by far the best version of Photoshop to date. While the decision to upgrade is yours, we believe that you should definitely download Photoshop CS6 and give it a try when it is available. Once you’ve had some time to work with it, we think you will be as impressed as we are.

What Do You Think?

Now that we’ve had our say. What do you think? What features are you looking forward to? Will you make the upgrade?
Martin Perhiniak | March 24, 2012

Photoshop is an excellent tool for manipulating photographs but it can also be used as a means to create stunning digital art. This tutorial is part of a 25-part video tutorial series demonstrating everything you will need to know to start producing digital art in Photoshop. Digital Art for Beginners, by Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, Martin Perhiniak will begin by teaching you how to draw in Photoshop. At the conclusion of this series you will know all you need to produce your own concept art and matte paintings in Photoshop.

Today’s tutorial Part 25: Paint a Castle in Photoshop – Part 2 we will continue to work on our castle painting from Part 1, focusing on the details. Let’s get started!
Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012

Are you looking for a place to host your new or current website? If so, our friends at Eleven2 are offering Psdtuts+ readers 68% off their shared (S-200) hosting package and 53% off their reseller (R-100) package for the first year. To take advantage of this fantastic designer hosting special, all you have to do is Sign Up before March 31, 2012 at 11:59 PM EST.

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Editor’s note: This article was sponsored by Eleven2.
Martin Perhiniak | March 24, 2012

We know how much you guys like to test your knowledge of Photoshop so today we are giving you an opportunity to do so with another quiz from Martin Perhiniak. Please take a moment to complete this 10-question quiz and see if you’re prepared to pass our test! Good luck!

Editor’s note: this quiz is for Photoshop CS5.
Josh Dykgraaf | March 24, 2012

Taking your own photos and combining them into an entirely new composition can be quite satisfying. In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial, author Josh Dykgraaf will show you how to create a walking city using a combination of photos that were taken exclusively for this project, as well as a few stock photos. The result will be reminiscent of a Star Wars walker. This tutorial is available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium Members. If you are looking to take your photo manipulation skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!

View the Tutorial

Tuts+ Premium Members can login now for instant access to this tutorial. Membership to Tuts+ Premium gets you access to hundreds of exclusive premium tutorials, top selling ebooks, in-depth courses, member forums, and much more. To learn more about Tuts+ Premium, Take the Tour or Join Today.
Grant Friedman | March 24, 2012

Dan Scott is a digital painter and concept artist from Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He has painted pieces for DC Comics, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer, and World of Warcraft. In this article we will feature some of our favorite World of Warcraft concepts from his portfolio. Let’s take a look!

Scout Kurgo

Harnum Firebelly

Landro Longshot

Zophos the Vengeful

Inventor Dorbin Callus

Blessings of the Heavens

Kinivus

Shalu Stormshatter

Ryno the Wicked

Beast Within, The

Defender Nagalaas

Enslave Demon

Sarlia

Exarch Orelis

Invisibility

Remba, Abbess of Ash

Squish Together

Marksman Boriz

Izza Spindleflame

Drek’Thar

Mazar

Snarl Hellwind

Pidge Filthfinder

Natural Alignment Crystal

Dan Scott On the Web

You can see more of Scott’s work on his website.
Michael Rather | March 24, 2012

Changing your camera lenses out in the field can cause your sensor to accumulate unwanted dust spots that eventually show up on your images. In this quick tip tutorial we will explain how you can easily remove these dust spots from your images using just a couple of basic tools available in Photoshop CS5. Let’s get started!
Emil Agarunov | March 24, 2012

In this article we will feature a collection of eye-popping sports car illustrations. These illustrations include everything from concept cars to recreations of classics. Let’s take a look!

Velocity

We start off with a stunning painting of a racecar. The overall piece is painted realistically and the extra colors added from the speed of the car work well with the overall tone.

Neglected Beatle

This painting features an old and not so glamorous car but the artist really does a wonderful job with the overall environment and color selection.