Adobe is debuting a beta testing program for its flagship Photoshop image-editing software for Creative Cloud subscribers. The company also announced updates to Photoshop on desktop as well as the iPad app version, with the addition of the venerable Healing Brush and Magic Wand tools finally making their way to the tablet. It all goes live today.

Photoshop Beta Program

A beta program allows users to test new features before their official release and to provide feedback to the software developer. In order to get Photoshop betas, users simply open the Creative Cloud application management utility and select the preview version in a new Beta section of available app installations. There’s no direct link to feedback, however: Users need to head to Adobe’s community forum(Opens in a new window) and tag posts as beta-related.

New Skies, Transform Warp, Discover Tools for Photoshop on Desktop

The new Get More Skies option in Photoshop’s Sky Replacement tool lets you choose from up to 5,000 sky backgrounds, including night scenes, fireworks, and sunsets.

With the Transform Warp tool, the update adds the ability to independently move Bezier handles. You can also now change the color and opacity of the warp guidelines so you don’t lose them in similarly colored backgrounds.

Adobe continues to make its rather complex programs easier to navigate, this time adding a Discover panel. The panel is invoked with the search keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-F on Windows, Cmd-F on macOS). This came in a July update, but we haven’t covered it yet. It’s really an evolution of the Find dialog, offering more one-step quick actions.

Photoshop on iPad Updates

A couple of Photoshop’s most seminal tools are the Healing Brush and Magic Wand, and with today’s update these finally come to the iPad version of the image-editing software. Just as on the desktop, the Healing Brush lets you sample an area in the photo (with an Apple Pencil if you have one) and brush its characteristics onto another area.

The Magic Wand is the grandaddy of selection tools. It now comes to Photoshop on the iPad, even though the platform already got the more modern Subject Select tool a while back. Though the Magic Wand doesn’t boast the other tool’s AI smarts, it does give users a simple way to select based on color and tone.

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Finally for the iPad, you can now project your canvas to an external monitor using an HDMI or USB-C cable. You’ll need to enable the option in Settings > General > Advanced.

Adobe’s blog post on the updates(Opens in a new window) notes that more than 500 other minor fixes have been implemented. One that stuck out to me is the ability to use any image of your choice to perform an AI Style Transfer. You can watch a presentation about the new features on Aug. 18 and 19 presented by photographer Anna McNaught and digital graphics expert Jesús Ramirez. The presentations will be streamed on Adobe’s Behance(Opens in a new window) art-sharing network.