General questions on Photoshop beta

[MarcySB]

I just learned about Photoshop Beta and would love to try/evaluate the new neural filters. I am running on a 4-year old Windows 10 tower PC with 16 Gig RAM and a Radion graphics card (from circa 2016) with 4 Gig of RAM. Before I download it, I have a couple of questions.

1) Is it safe to have both Photoshop and Photoshop Beta on the same computer?

2) Will the Beta version run with my current configuration (I don't know what resources the new filters need)?

3) Does the Beta version have all the same functionality as the regular version (I am NOT going to uninstall the regular version).

4) Is there somewhere to get general information about Beta - what is needs, what it does? I tried to search the Adobe website but could not find anything.

Thank you,

Marcy

[Pete.Green · Accepted solution]

Hi @MarcySB,

Thanks for checking in. You've asked some great questions! 

1) Is it safe to have both Photoshop and Photoshop Beta on the same computer?

Absolutely. They'll install into different folders. It looks like you're on Windows, so only one version of Photoshop will be able to be opened at any given time. Either general release or the beta. 

2) Will the Beta version run with my current configuration?

Generally you can refer to the regular Photoshop system requirements article when installing to the Photoshop beta. Though as we updated to 24.0, it is no longer supported for macOS 10.15.7.

3) Does the Beta version have all the same functionality as the regular version (I am NOT going to uninstall the regular version).

You definitely do not need to uninstall the regular version as you can have both on your system safely (see 1) and generally yes, all the same functionality as available in the regular version will be available in the beta. There may be cases when/if a feature is on its way towards deprecation that the beta realizes that change sooner than general release. The opposite is also true, that the beta will have newer features before the general release sees them as well. 

4) Is there somewhere to get general information about Beta - what is needs, what it does?

Here are a few general resources to help with that. Primarily the Photoshop beta is to test and rate new features for viability and test code changes/bug fixes to help ensure stability. 

• Adobe Creative Cloud Beta FAQ
• Welcome to the Photoshop beta community! (things to know)
• The Photoshop beta is now available.

Let us know if you have any other questions we can help with!

Regards,

Pete

[MarcySB]

Pete,

I know I have the minimum to run Photoshop and I see by your link the requirements were updated for the latest 23.x release. Things have been slowing down on my computer big-time while using Photoshop. I'm running on 16 GIG RAM and a VERY old graphics card, and I am creating very large composites with a lot of layers. So I am now planning to get a new computer this fall. I may wait Photoshop Beta until then, although I'm excited to try/evaluate the new neural filters, so I'm not sure.

Thanks so much for your help.

Marcy (I really should change my display name!)

[Pete.Green]

Thanks Marcy!

You write, "Things have been slowing down......16 GIG RAM and a VERY old graphics card, and I am creating very large composites with a lot of layers"

The updated system will help with these workflows for sure. More RAM and newer GPU will really speed up these large file workflows.

Regarding Neural Filters and downloading the beta, I'd say give it a try! Maybe better with a few smaller images if possible, and evaluate from there.

Hope this helps. 

Regards,

Pete