Back down again today in another burst of randomness, or something.

I took the 5D Mark II and my Sigma 12-24mm lens for a walk at lunchtime. My main aim was to get an updated wide view of the Millennium Bridge to improve on this one that I took in 2009:

With added bollards

And here it is:

As intended

The conditions were very different – last time, it was the height of summer, so quite naturally it was a grey, miserable day with loads of dramatic cloud, while today it was the tail end of winter with a hint of spring, so naturally it was bright and sunny, with the sun creating a lot of glare at upper left. Still, I think the improvement of the view can be clearly made out.

I walked back up via the Black Gate:

Black Gate

Then past the Stephenson memorial, which will soon be uncovered after a major restoration job – I’ll be getting some pictures of that soon.

And from there, I took a roundabout route to the office, as you can see here:

Click to play

You can click on the map to play with it, should you be so inclined.

In a totally not unpredictable move, Adobe have released a beta of the forthcoming next version of Photoshop. This incorporates the new Camera Raw toys that we already know and love in Lightroom 4[1].

Plus the usual range of new toys and enhancements.

I’m interested in the thingy for straightening wide-angle images. It’s long been possibly to make a global adjustment, but this looks a lot more flexible. Though you will be doing some serious cropping…

And talking of cropping, the crop tool is all-new and enhanced, and seems to be more Lightroom-like, though with more toys.

I’ll be having a play with the beta, and then attempting to understand how Adobe’s new sales model will work (hint: they really, really, really want people buying subscriptions).

Adobe blog announcement

Get it here

Useful videos and stuff from Photoshop User

[1] Well, I quite like them so far, anyway