The key questions any user will be asking about the new Adobe Photoshop CS6 (from $699 or $199 for upgrades) are, "Does it do even cooler things with my images? Does it perform better? Is it easier to work with?" The answer to all of these questions, I'm happy to report, is a resounding Yes. You would think that after a program has been the leader in its field for over 20 years, there wouldn't be much to add. But quite the opposite is the case with Adobe Photoshop CS6 , which improves both basic operations like cropping, along with tons of more nitty-gritty detail functions like adding dotted-lines to strokes.

In fact, the new version adds 62 percent more new features than the previous version, including a speed boost and some jaw-dropping new "content aware" tricks. Photoshop's interface, too, gets a welcome upgrade, thanks to some trimming and clever improvements—though the company is careful to always offer the option of reverting to the earlier look.

The new version will thrill nearly all categories of users, from photographers to designers. It isn't cheap, at $699 and $999 for the Extended edition (which adds 3D editing), though upgrades cost $199 and $399, respectively. A new Adobe option, Creative Cloud, gets you the Extended version along with the rest of the Creative Suite, starting at $49 a month. Despite its cost, Photoshop remains the ultimate image editor on the planet, though other apps, like Corel Paint Shop Pro ($80, 3.5 stars), GIMP (Free, 4 stars), and Serif PhotoPlus ($90, 2.5 stars) have tried to unseat Adobe's app. It's refreshing to see the makers of such a successful program not sitting on their laurels, but instead continuing to make impressive advances in their art.

Cleaner Interface

The Photoshop interface can be intimidating to even the most hardened software user. This time around, Adobe decided to ease up on its users' eyes by eliminating a redundant toolbar and adding several more slick interface tricks. That includes side panels, like those for history or layers, that can optionally display only when you're using them—click back into your image, and the flyout panel can auto-hide (with a preference setting.). Little touches like this alone make Photoshop CS6 a huge productivity booster and frustration eliminator.

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One interface change will strike long-time users the second they see the new Photoshop: It uses the dark gray seen in most modern photo applications. You can, however, switch this back if you prefer the old way, or choose an intermediate shade. And by default, your images will open in tabs against the dark gray program window, instead of free-floating against your distracting wallpaper. Another change is that Mini Bridge is clearly labeled (as opposed to "MB," its former monicker), and runs along the bottom in a filmstrip view—much more useful than the extra right-panel it added previously. Less obvious is the thorough edit the interface itself has undergone to standardize spelling and grammar in all its messages and controls.

Faster Performance

Adobe has sped up Photoshop (and Bridge, which has been rewritten for 64-bit processors) by using Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, which uses your system's graphics hardware (both AMD and Nvidia), to speed up image processing. Formerly, this was only used for video, but CS6 brings it into image processing, too. The program also now processes in the background, so you don't have to wait long after you hit Save, and an Auto-save automatically saves recovery info every 10 minutes by default, à la Microsoft Office. Adobe claims the program is up to 1,000 times faster for some operations. I still occasionally had to wait for some operations, though—particularly the new content-aware move and patch tools, on my low-power iMac 2.5-GHz Core i5 computer.