: Dual screen for comparison in Photoshop CS6 I'm looking for an option to have two instances of the same image/file next to each other (dual view), so that I can edit one of them and see

@Martha945

Rather than using Photoshop, you can use a dual file comparison using Pixelapse.
www.pixelapse.com
It offers stacked file and transitional slide comparison options too.

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@Tiffany317

There isn't a specific feature built into Photoshop to do this because it's so easy to simply use Image > Duplicate that it would be fairly redundant. In terms of engineering budget, the time would not be well spent. Contrast this with Lightroom or Camera Raw, where the duplication isn't available or practical, so a side-by-side "before and after" feature is desirable.

Photoshop's New Window feature, on the other hand, is important. For many retouching and tricky masking/compositing tasks, having one window zoomed way in to work on details while the other window is zoomed out to show the effect in context is tremendously useful, especially when they are locked together so that the views stay in sync as you move around in the image.

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@Murray976

Duplicate the existing file, in its current state. Use the original as your preview of new ideas and future changes. Use the the duplicate as the version to compare things back to.

There's also a layer mode change state thing in Photoshop CC, but it's not stable, doesn't account for all changes and isn't kind on memory, so I don't recommend it.

The manual approach of duplicating files is safer, faster, better.

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