Contextual Task Bars Now in Photoshop (Beta)

[Noelle Shamroukh]

We’re excited to announce that new contextual task bars are now available in Photoshop Public Beta. We know that finding the right tool, at the right time, can sometimes slow down a great workflow. Our new contextually aware task bars aim to help by providing common tools, actions and next steps right on the canvas where you’re working. We are currently launching five bars for importing new documents, making selections and using the Type Tool. Learn more below: 

Open Image or File

• This bar will appear when you open an image or file in Photoshop (i.e. not a new, empty document)

New Document Workflow

• This bar will appear if you open a new, blank document from the Photoshop home screen

• If you choose to select “import image”, your image will be placed in the document as a Smart Object and the Free Transform bar will appear to help finalize placement

Type Tool Workflow

• This bar will appear when you select the Type tool from the tool bar and draw a text box on the canvas

Selections Workflow

• Once a selection is made, a selection edit bar will appear with options to refine the selection or create a mask

Tips and Other Menu Functionality

• Pin bar position
  • You can pin and un-pin any bar from the “more menu”. Pinning will hold your bar (and all subsequent bars) where it was placed on the canvas until un-pinned from the “more menu” performed
• Reset bar position
  • The context bar moves with you as you work on the canvas, keeping relevant tools at your finger tips. If you would like to reset the position, you can do so from the “more menu”
• Hide bar
  • You can always hide the bar if you’d like to remove it completely, or temporarily, from the canvas. If you’d like to re-open the bar at any point, go to Window > Contextual Task Bar

We need your feedback!

Please let us know what you think and how we could improve the new Contextual Task Bar.

[suetep]

Looks amazing. I like it. This will definitely help my workflow. I think it would be nicer if it could be customized, too.

[Pete.Green]

Glad you're liking the tool so far for your workflows @suetep. Customization is on the team's list of future improvements to this. Thanks for the great feedback!

[AndrewBuckle]

Pete, actually seeing this now in my release version of Photoshop ... as well as the beta. Can't see any notes about it on the ';whats new' page for Photoshop, nothing listed at all for April. 

[Glaive1976]

Pete, give us the ability to disable the feature. How did this make it through beta without the ability to remember settings from the previous session?

[ChaseHLU]

While I do see the benefit of it, at first blush for me, I dont care for it right now.
Im a near 30 year vet of Photoshop, so my life in the app revolves around keyboard shortcuts that are faster, so imagine my surprise in the Beta when I went to use a brush and a context box popped up that gave me more mouse clicks instead of just  fast shortcut. Confused me and got in my way.
I do see the advantage of the Contextual Task Bar showing you more options you may not be aware of that said tool could do. That I do enjoy and I do enjoy the fact that I can park it in the top toolbar, where for my workflow, it fits. Still have to see if I actually benefit from one more step to an end result.

[Tristan I]

So far i'm liking the Contextual Task Bar. I agree that customisation would be great.
The only frustration i have right now is likely a bug, but it is causing my screen to jump around a lot when i confirm transformations or when i select/deselect items.

[michellem81595204]

So far I don't like it. Just gets in my way. I had to turn it off. 

[paulh11942775]

I may be missing something but it does not appear to have the same properties as other windows - i.e. to be "dockable" with history/info/layers, etc etc.   When I want to make an operation, I automatically look over there - currently I use TK8 Combo which has most of the same selection options but I could imagine the contextural taskbar being a good replacement if it could be docked and still changed to provide the relevant context for whatever one was doing

[Skwirlijvieux]

I have no use for this thing at this time.  I might learn to like it if I could make it vertical and tuck it into the left side of my screen along with my brushes, gradients, tool presets and tools panels.

[Skwirlijvieux]

 Make it dockable and vertical and let me stick it over here and I'll try it.  Right now it's just one more jimcrack I don't need.

[keep_matt]

Looks a cool feature but my task bar keeps constantly blinking on and off, very distracting, so have had to hide it. Hopefully this will be fixed in an update

[ThereforeGames]

Please allow us to dock it as if it were a normal panel.

[Sabocat]

Are they supposed ot flash on and off constantly?

[AndrewBuckle]

think it is a very good feature, it is excellent with selections (particularly the fill pattern command) but I hope more functionality is added to the transformations one such as scale 200% and rotate 45 etc as well as adding a few more things to the newly opened image one such as resize and create new (again) and also duplicate image as well as changing import image to 'place image' or place embedded. 

It works really well, I hope it is added to many other features in Photoshop such as with gradients, such as adding a new stop, deleting all the stops, changing type of gradients, inverting gradients, etc as well as adding it to shapes such as circles and custom shapes

[gpecu]

It's in my way. I paste a screenshot, it assumes the image i'm working with is a photograph that has a subject and a background, and then presumes that i want to either select the subject or remove the background, or apply any number of layer adjustments that I only use when I'm working with photographs. Seems more or less gimmicky and worthless to me right now. I "hid" it using the properties menu on the bar, but then it returned the next time I copied and pasted another screenshot. That unexpected and undesirable behavior sent me here, though I haven't been able to replicate it, so perhaps it was a bug, or something I did incorrectly. This floating content bar might be fine for somebody, but I'd much rather it be permanently banished from my awareness.  

[Gisa0101]

I hide the bar and now I cannot find where to make it show again like it was default

[Gisa0101]

I am enjoying this new feature.. some images not looking the best, there is room for improvement. but it does a great job. I am a photograoher and mixed media artist and I am looking forward to use more and more this feature.

[louised43358484]

Right now it is just something that has to be moved out of the way frequently. I have "pinned" it multiple times and it still moves to the centre of the screen where I do not want it to be. Make it so that it can be docked and it would be great, or make it so that it actually stays where we place it when we click pin location.

[sarag32399423]

I closed my task bar out and now it cannot be found. It is not in the Window menu. Any advice?

[louised43358484]

I had to shut PS down then restart it and it was in the Windows menu

[AndrewBuckle]

window menu > contextual task bar should bring it back ?? Right at the bottom 

[sarag32399423]

Am I crazy or incompetent? I've uninstalled the beta, re-installed it. Restarted PS multiple times and have also restarted my computer. 

[CShubert]

@sarag32399423 what version of Ps beta do you have, what is it that you are trying to find but not seeing?

[sarag32399423]

Hi Cory, I just updated my version of Ps as of 2 minutes ago and now have the contextual toolbar back. I'm not sure what happened but after downloading the beta yeserday, I lost my toolbar and after updating, it's back.