Adobe Photoshop CS6 beta now free to all

It's been a good two years since Adobe last unveiled a new version of Photoshop, and it looks like the team spent that time very wisely, because what we've got in the Photoshop CS6 beta is a magnificent and worthy upgrade. Seriously, you should probably go download it right now, since the almost 1 GB file will probably take a while to complete. We've got a list of all the new features after the jump.

New Features

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
- 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 termsof 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 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