CS6 Beta first impressions

Question

Here is a list of things I noticed during a first test drive of the Photoshop CS6 Beta. This is a mixture of feature requests, bug reports and general observations. I just typed this up as I went along. I'm sorry I don't have enough time to file proper bug reports and feature requests, but I though this might still be useful feedback. These things are in no particular order (well, except in the order I noticed them), and I'm sure there are a quite a few grammar/spelling errors, but right now that's all the time I can invest, sorry.
And even though this all sounds really negative (I basically just listed the annoying points since a list of good thigs probably isn't very useful), I am quite happy with the new version, congratulations to the team! I love the cat graphic on the splash screen by the way.
All these things were tested on a MacBook (2008 I think) with OS X Snow Leopard and 8 GB of RAM. So here you go:
Ctrl+Some Key still not available as shortcuts (e.g. Cmd+H Hide Photoshop, Ctrl+H Hide Extras)
The aesthetic merit of the font choice in the about box/splash screen is debatable
Despite all the vector enhancements, Spacebar+drag still doesn't work in the Pen tool like it does in other Adobe applications
Paragraph and Character style definitions apparently cannot be shared with InDesign or Illustrator so far. There is no way to link to external style definition files, and no way to import or export. Since all these applications use the same text engine, this seems like a missed opportunity, requiring a lot of duplicate work on the user's part (not as much as in previous versions, though)
The title bar of the document window uses the system title bar and thus does not match the overall interface skin. If that is set to dark (which is the default), it calls attention to itself.
There is no way to hide the filter bar in the layers panel, making it waste screen space on laptop screens when it is not needed.
The Warp option in Free Transform was updated to add GPU acceleration, which is great. That would have been a perfect opportunity to make the number of subdivisions user-adjustable.
There are lots of new vector features. This would have been a perfect opportunity to integrate After Effects' mask and shape system (including effects like repeaters), resulting in increased compatibility for importing Photoshop files into AE. Besides, all enhancements would pay off double since two applications would benefit from them. That would also have added the option to feather vector shapes for use as soft vector masks (Photoshop's mask feather function seems to perform a blur and thus is significantly slower, plus it applies globally to all paths in the mask). Still, the vector features are very well implemented, even though Fireworks still seems to have a slight edge.
The red "active" indicator on the layers panel filter bar calls attention to itself. The entire application uses grayscale icons. While I can see why this indicator needs to be obvious, I think that is too much.
The "Scripted Pattern" function is not very intuitive to use without any kind of preview. Also, it is not really clear how to create your own scripts, edit the existing ones or even just adjust parameters.
The Fill dialog in general takes too many clicks with that popup menu. Using icons or something similar would save a lot of mouse miles/clicks.
There is still no way to directly load 50% gray as the foreground/background color. In photo retouching etc., this comes up a lot. Adding a little icon to the color picker in the toolbox with the ability to assign a shortcut would help a lot. Waiting for this since version 5 or so...
Curves still doesn't support editing the layer's alpha channel nor LAB mode (at least not without converting the entire document to LAB mode or a smart object).
The "File Info" is still the ugly inefficient Flash monster where everything takes ten times as long to do than it did with the old dialog it replaced a few versions back (mouse wheel doesn't work on tabs, text editing shortcuts are different/don't work, tabs instead of the InDesign-like list of categories and many more). Photomerge is still ugly, but at least it doesn't have such major usability issues. The interface is inconsistent enough already, why do these have to be Flash?!
Shift key during canvas rotation to constrain angles still only works when using the tool but is ignored when using a multitouch pad gesture
The minimum size on the new "Adjustments" panel is larger than necessary
There still seems to be no option to not hide all panels when activating another application, causing that visual jump and slight desorientation every time
That new pen tool cursor is huge
There are still no Lightroom-like info bubbles or indicator icons (like LR's process version upgrade warning) for entering Quick Mask, toggling Softproofing etc. that would alert the user when accidental keystrokes
Photoshop doesn't seem to ask the user to automatically migrate settings and presets from any previous version on first launch. The migrate presets function does nothing (don't know if this is an issue related to the computer I am testing this on).
The "Blend RGB Colors using Gamma" feature in the color management settings still seems to be global and not per document (not 100% sure, though). This results in files being displayed differently on different computers, which is not a good idea.
The line-based warping in "Adaptive Wide Angle" is only available within that filter as far as I can tell. This is a missed opportunity IMO. Being able to specify arbitrary source and destination paths to that algorithm would make for a very powerful warping tool.
I'm not exactly sure what caused it, but I managed to accidentally disable path anti-aliasing and I can't seem to find a way to switch it on again. No combinations in the GPU preferences under "Performance", including switching GPU acceleration off completely, restored it. This is either a bug or a usability problem. Personally, I think the option to antialias paths and guides should be located in the View menu, not hidden in the GPU preferences.
In the settings for a LUT adjustment layer, clicking any of the radio buttons will automatically pop up a file selection dialog, even if my intention was to use one of the presets. That file selection dialog also gives me no clue which file formats are supported (i.e the regular format popup is missing).
Both Cmd+Space and the zoom tool itself now seem to behave identically. There is no more way to drag a box, except to switch off "Scrubby Zoom" altogether. Using both methods in parallel (as I would prefer) is unfortunately no longer possible as far as I can tell.
The brush cursor in Liquify is always dark, making it hard to see on black surfaces for instance. "Advanced Mode" is also off by default. Since the entire thing is in a huge dialog box (a solution like Blur Gallery's interface would seem like a better way to do this by the way), there is no real benefit to hiding these controls since there are no UI elements that would benefit from the additional space. It just requires an additional click.
The Liquify preview flickers as I am typing this in a TextEdit window that is floating above it
Select > Color Range would benefit from buttons with icons for preview mode instead of a dropdown. Same for Curves (tabs would probably be best in that case, but at least we have the shortcuts for now)
The "Sample all Layers" option vanishes when switching the Patch tool from "Content Aware" to "Normal"
That's it for now, thanks for listening.

Answer 1

@Chris Cox: I didn't mean post professionals who probably answered your surveys, but cinematographers and the like who currently simply deliver JPEGs of their desired look as far as I know, not colorists and effects artists using Photoshop to generate their look. But I'm no expert on those workflows, and I completely agree, a third party solution for LUT export is probably the best way to implement such a workflow.
@c.pfaffenbichler: Most professionals are still working predominantly in a semi-destructive way (i.e. using layers). Smart objects are too much hassle for most things (especially not being able to see your changes in context when editing them), so keeping an original layer and re-applying a filter is still very common.
Seeing that Blur Gallery can export a channel, that actually makes it quite useful, contrary to my initial assessment. Even though the interface is currently not optimized for this, it looks like Blur Gallery is a great quick and easy way to generate layer masks for color corrections.
@TLL..: Professionals will always buy their software. And those people who don't won't make that decision dependent on the licensing model. Very few of those who pirate programs are actually lost customers who don't buy software because they found a way can get it for free. It just doesn't work that way even though many companies would like to think it does. Most people simply wouldn't buy the software if piracy was not an option, with price being the deciding factor. The question is simply how spread-out the transition area inbetween is. I don't have Adobe's research data, though, so I can't comment on their specific case (I'd guess Photoshop is one of the most pirated programs, though), but I don't think threatening them with piracy is going to be that effective, they probably have someone who does nothing else all day than figure out smart ways to optimize these kinds of things for maximum profit
Just as a side note, in some cases piracy actually works in a company's favor. Microsoft owed much of its market dominance in their early days to the fact that unlike the competition their software was not copy protected and thus became much more widely used than comparable solutions, leading to much higher sales than copy protection could ever have given them.
Don't get me wrong, I am in no way defending piracy here, of course, I just think it's interesting from a strategic perspective. On the other hand, Photoshop is quite well known and doesn't have any real competition, so that probably defeats my point. Anyway, moving on.
I had a chance to play with the Beta again today for about an hour, and here are a few more things I found (again, a mixture of bugs, features I had hoped for, quirks etc. that I noticed and jotted down as I went along):
The new in-place/on-canvas filters like Blur Gallery use an OK/Cancel button combination to exit the semi-modal state, which is inconsistent with all the existing semi-modal tools like Crop and Free Transform (which continue to use the checkmark system).
Panel groups can no longer be collapsed by double clicking in the free area next to the tabs, only the tabs themselves. Not sure if that is intended behavior or a bug.
Most panels seem to be docked below the Brushes panel by default for some reason so that showing any of these panels will also automatically bring up the much larger Brushes panel.
ExtendScript Toolkit always crashes when switching to the "Fonts and Colors" tab in Preferences. This behavior can be reproduced every time. Unless this is related to a specific configuration, I can't imagine how this could have slipped through during QA/internal testing.
There is currently no documentation for the APIs for the new Deco patterns, at least I was not able to find any, but I guess this is going to change in the release build.
The Displace filter is still stuck in the early nineties (no preview, not accepting channels but using separate map files etc.). Displace is one of the most used filters in photo post production and image compositing.
When placing files, it is never made 100% clear to the user which files/file types are linked to and which ones are embedded. An option to choose and possibly even a links panel like in InDesign and Illustrator would be useful.
For placed videos (which seem to be linked to rather than embedded), the link seems to consist of just an absolute path (heard about this problem somewhere else, didn't have a chance to verify). I'd suggest storing both relative and absolute paths and if one fails to match, try the other before requesting a manual relink.
The properties panel displays an unnecessary vertical scrollbar for Curves adjustment layers that just scrolls down to some empty space below
The Timeline panel flyout menu has lost the "Document Settings" command. There now seems to be no reasonably obvious way to set the overall animation duration. There is also no "Trim Animation to Work Area" command. New layers seem to always use some kind of default duration, not the duration of the current timeline sequence.
The segments in the animation timeline are a very vibrant color (at least on a wide gamut monitor). Ideally, they should at least match the color palette established by the blue selection highlight color, the ok buttons in the options bar and the render progress bar (which I really like). Strongly colored UI elements affect the perception of color in the image. Autodesk Smoke/Flame does a great job of using a non-obtrusive color palette in its interface.
The "Set Current Time" dialog box that pops up when double-clicking the timecode display in the bottom area of the Timeline panel does not support pressing the escape key to cancel if the text field has the focus. Pressing Tab doesn't seem to change the focus either. Pressing down on the OK button, holding and dragging out of it doesn't hide the selection in the text field, but the escape key now works as expected. The return key works as expected in all situations, no matter which control has the focus.
The "Split Clip" button doesn't seem to work well with the undo system. The corresponding menu bar item (Edit > Undo Split Clip) is sometimes grayed out. Switching to another application and back to Photoshop seems to re-enable the menu item in some cases. The grayed-out menu item obviously also blocks out the use of the corresponding hotkey (Cmd+Z in the default configuration).
Dragging transitions to clips sometimes has no effect. I can't give a specific combination of things that cause this behavior, but it seems to be a per-document issue. If it kicks in, transition dragging doesn't work at all, i.e. it is always all segments in a particular timeline that don't accept transitions, not just individual ones. The dragging process happens as expected, but basically, the segments don't highlight under the mouse, nor do they accept the transition.
Keyframe interpolations are limited to "Linear" and "Hold". A minimalistic "Smooth" option would be really useful, and it wouldn't have a noticeable impact on the complexity of the video timeline feature for novice users. I'm no AE expert, but I believe it has a feature called "Easy easy" keyframes, too, giving you smooth interpolation without manually adjusting the bézier animation curves.
The horizontal scroll bar on the Timeline panel always shows some extra empty space, like the Properties panel for Curves. There is also no obvious "Zoom Timeline to Fit All" function (a toggle between 100% and the last zoom position would make sense, I think this is also how Avid implemented it in Media Composer).
3D layer rendering still isn't really a background thread and almost all interactions with the applications cancel the render operation.
Vector shapes unfortunately only support plain vector outline strokes instead of allowing the user to apply any of the brush presets (or even use any of the settings inside the "Stroke Path" command, which would enable things like smearing using vector shapes). In my opinion, that is really the missed opportunity for additional usefulness that vector support in a pixel-based application can offer. I know the vector shapes feature is aimed at designers who don't want to switch between Photoshop and Illustrator for every single vector task, but that would have been a way to make that feature much more relevant for more than just the screen design demographic.
The beta doesn't ship with the Pixel Bender filter, which I hope is going to change with the final build. That filter needs some work compared to CS5 (supporting the AE user control fields, supporting high-resolution images at least in CPU mode, channels as input images, color management issues, etc.) The CS5 release still feels very much like Alpha software (Pixel Bender Toolkit is even worse).
The 3D camera has no on-screen widget to specify depth of field distance settings or even locking them to an object (similar to an aimed camera in compositing programs and 3D software). The sliders are also sometimes quite laggy, ideally all sliders should be completely interactive with only the render lagging behind. A slider that sticks jumps around while the software is rendering can be quite frustrating for a user (Lightroom has had that problem for a long time).
The "Sketch" render presets seem to give incorrect results (i.e. results that have nothing to do with the 3D object, just a bunch of semi-random shapes and rectangles. The render button is also completely disabled. There also seems to be no way to activate the "Sketch" setting except through the presets.
The fact that Content Aware Move allows the user to change the Adaptation setting after the fact is not very discoverable and inconsistent with both the other tools and apparently even the behavior of the Mode setting on the same tool. I'd suggest giving the tool a pseudo-modal state like the crop and free transform tools instead.
The lorem ipsum command is called "Paste Lorem Ipsum". The use of the term "Paste" here is potentially confusing since it has nothing to do with the system clipboard. "Insert" would be a better choice of words in my opinion. Also, the same command inside InDesign is called "Fill with Placeholder Text", so you may want to consider using that for cross-application consistency.
On the 2008 generation MacBook I was able to test this on, Liquify always launches in CPU mode (1 pixel black border around the preview image). Not sure if the GPU in that system is simply not supported. I suggest showing an unobtrusive information note somewhere (maybe below the settings), like "GPU acceleration for this filter is not supported on this hardware configuration". Like the "Efficiency" setting in the document window status bar, this would help users identify potential performance bottlenecks on their systems. The black border is just not very discoverable.
The improvements to text (paragraph/character styles etc.) would make a glyphs panel like in InDesign and Illustrator a logical addition (saves unnecessary copy & paste operations).
It seems that multiple clips in the Animation Timeline cannot be trimmed at the same time, even if they are both selected.
The "Show Asian Text Options" checkbox seems to have disappeared from Preferences. Things like the Warichu option still seems to be Illustrator-only, even though it is incredibly useful for other things beyond what it was intended for (movie poster-style credits are the most popular example, but there are many more). Also, it seems illogical that you would have to choose between either of the text engines available, but I guess this is required by historical engineering decisions.
Panels still can only be docked to the edges of the primary monitor. Docking is not available on secondary monitors. On Windows, docking only works inside the main window, no matter on which screen. I know this is standard behavior, but I never really understood the logic behind that.
Hope this is useful.