Adobe has released a beta version of Photoshop PS3. I have been reading some remarkable stories of the enhanced Photomerge function with PS3 over PS2. I have recently gone to utilizing tilt/shift lenses as well as panoramic gear to aid in the quality of digital stitching. While at the Fine Art Digital Summit I captured a 3 pane image with the 24mm tilt/shift from Horseshoe Bend. I had played around with PS2 Photomerge and the results were not that impressive. Now my core program for stitching had been PTAssembler, so I was not concerned, it was simply an act of experimentation more than anything. Well I have been quite busy with the San Juan work and finally had a chance to take a look at PS3 Photomerge with the same 3 Horseshoe Bend images. I must say that the first impression is extremely positive. The blend was seamless and dead-on with alignment as well as tonal transitions in the sky. This is really impressive for an automatic setting. Now I just went through the paces rather quickly tonight and hope to really give the image a thorough workup over the next few weeks, but I must say that the initial impression is very favorable and I am relieved to now have a very high quality stitching solution with a very simple user interface. Stay tuned for more.