Wednesday, August 18th, 2021 Posted by Jim Thacker

Adobe ships Photoshop 22.5


Adobe has released Photoshop 22.5, the latest version of its image-editing and digital painting software.

The release updates the Transform Warp system and Discover panel, and introduces new downloadable sky images for the Sky Replacement system. Photoshop has also been added to Adobe’s public beta program.

In addition, Adobe has discontinued Photoshop’s 3D features and export of documents as SVG files.

Updates to Transform Warp, the Discover panel and Sky Replacement
The biggest change in Photoshop 22.5 is to the Transform Warp system, which gets new options for warping images more precisely.

The update introduces a new Split Warp grid, in which the density of the anchor points used to warp the image is not uniform, but can be increased in key areas of the image.

In addition, it is now possible to adjust Bezier handles for anchor points independently.

Other changes include making the What’s New section of the Discover panel browseable, and the option to download free packs of sky images for the Sky Replacement system from Adobe Discover.

Experimental Beta builds available in future
Outside the main release, Adobe has added Photoshop to its public Beta program.

The change will make beta builds of the software with experimental new features available in parallel with the stable releases, as with other Creative Cloud apps like After Effects.

3D features and SVG export removed
However, perhaps the most significant changes are not what has been added, but what has been removed.

Adobe has announced that it is discontinuing Photoshop’s 3D features in favour of the dedicated 3D tools in its Substance 3D Collection, citing difficulty updating Photoshop’s 3D engine from OpenGL to newer APIs.

You can read more about the decision in this story, which includes information on how to continue using Photoshop’s 3D features in the short-to-mid term.

In addition, it is no longer possible to export Photoshop documents directly in SVG format.

As a workaround, users can still export files to Illustrator, Adobe’s dedicated vector design app, using the legacy ‘Export As’ option, then export SVG files from there.

Pricing and system requirements
Photoshop 22.5 is available for Windows 10 and macOS 10.14+ on a rental-only basis. In the online documentation, the release is also referred to as the August 2021 update.

Photography subscription plans, which include access to Photoshop and Lightroom, start at $119.88/year. Single-app Photoshop subscriptions cost $31.49/month.


Read a full list of new features in Photoshop 22.5 in the online documentation