When it comes to image manipulation tools, the granddaddy of them all has to be Adobe Photoshop. Go to pretty much any company that spends any time manipulating images and they will have Photoshop. It is, to all intents and purposes, the standard against which all others are measured.

It’s been quite some time since Adobe launched a new version of its Photoshop software but finally, that time has come. Well, at least in the form of a new Beta.

Late yesterday, the company released Photoshop CS6 beta into the wild. It features a new, faster and more modern user interface, re-engineered design tools and content-aware patching.

“Photoshop CS6 will be a milestone release that pushes the boundaries of imaging innovation with incredible speed and performance,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. “We couldn’t wait to share this beta of Photoshop CS6 with our customers and are looking forward to hearing from them and seeing the ways they are incorporating the beta into their daily creative workflows.”

If you want to check out the new beta it would help to have fast internet. The file weighs in at about 1GB. PC users need to have a 2GHz or faster processor with at least 1GB of RAM and be running Windows XP SP3 or Windows 7. Mac users need multicore Intel processor, 1GB of RAM and OS X 10.6.8 or newer.

The Photoshop CS6 beta is available now from Adobe’s website. Expect the final version sometime in 2012.

If you want to know more, click through for the full press release from Adobe.

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The fan community is certainly one of the strongest forces in the entertainment industry since the rise of the internet. Long gone is the idea of an old-timey press room where the barrier between the readers and the writers held strong. Now fanboys like Harry Knowles hold power purely because of the geek credibility that he currently weilds.

With a rule like that, fans are the true final word as to whether a film gets a sequel, if not a multi-film franchise, so why wouldn’t they be the ones who decide what movie ideas get made?

A few years ago, a fan put together a little photoshopped poster where Sam Jackson takes on a ridiculous plot like poisonous snakes being let loose on a plane mid-flight. 32 million dollars in production and $62 million in ticket sales later, Snakes on a Plane was considered somewhat of a win by New Line.

Now, fans are at it again with a (far superior) photoshop job showcasing a possible Walt Disney biopic starring the lovable Ryan Gosling, simply titled Walt. You can thank French artist Pascal Witaszek for being the brains (and eye) behind this one.

Take a look at the image after the jump, and help share this so we can get a seemingly awesome film like this made by a talented team.

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Even though Apple won’t be attending this year’s Macworld Expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, that isn’t stopping organizers IDG from having one. This year, in what they are calling ‘The Start of a new Era” the organizers have assembled a host of great speakers, panels and events for Apple and Mac enthusiasts everywhere.

Some of the highlights of the event include an evening with David Pogue, Q&A with writer/director Kevin Smith, the 20th anniversary of Photoshop event, Macworld Magizine’s “Best of Show” awards and a hands-on demo of Apple’s latest product, the iPad.

The Show Floor opens Thursday: 12:00pm to 6:00pm

Thursday’s Highlights:

Late Night with David Pogue – Join New York Times’ Columnis David Pogue for song parodies, surprise guests, jokes at Apple’s expense, and a lot of geeking out.
9:00am – 10:00am

See the Best New Products First

11:00am – 12:00pm
Q&A with Kevin Smith – filmmaker and director of Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. The conversation, sure to be lively, wry and irreverent, will give Macworld attendees a special opportunity to engage with Smith as he answers audience questions – nothing is off limits!
2:00pm – 3:00pm

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As Apple often does, everyone’s favorite fruit-flavored computer company quietly give their flagship line of professional computers, the Mac Pro, a bump in speed. They also included new storage options such as 2 TB 7200 RPM drives for the towers as well in this bit of enhancement magic. For the quad-core Mac Pro (but not the eight-core model), you can now order a 3.33 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor which, if you don’t know, is pretty darn fast.

This baby has 8 MB of fully shared L3 cache, Hyper-Threading technology, an integrated memory controller, Turbo Boost for short bursts of speed up to 3.6 GHz and can really blow the doors off any kind of intense rendering tasks like you find in Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro or similar. In short, if you’re a high-end graphics or video professional, your job, and making those tight deadlines, just got easier.

We were wondering what had happend with Apple’s top of the line Mac since the introduction the new 27″ Intel Core i7 iMac in October. Traditionally, the Mac Pro is the performance king and it was a bit odd that the line had not had an update. Fortunately, Apple has remedied that situation now. The new Mac Pro options are available today at Apple’s online store.