2025 promises to be a landmark year for England with milestone celebrations and exciting new launches across the country. The new year will mark the 200th anniversary of the modern railway with nationwide festivities, celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday with immersive events and crown Bradford as UK City of Culture 2025. From the Women’s Rugby World Cup to the launch of new hotels, food halls, tours, events and attractions, Brits can expect 2025 to be action-packed.
Brighton’s most eye-catching landmark, the i360 observation tower, is filing for insolvency. The doughnut-shaped observation tower located by the beach has been riding high up on a pole to reveal far-reaching views over the coastal city since 2016.
The operators blame escalating costs, bad summer weather, and the cost-of-living crisis for its demise.
Brighton and Hove City Council, who loaned millions to the city landmark in 2014, has described the decision as “extremely disappointing.” The i360 is the council’s biggest creditor and the decision leaves the council facing a loss is £32 million for its loan debt and interest repayable to the Government.
The Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council and Labour leader Bella Sankey blasted the development as a “day of shame” for the Green Party, which led the authority at the time, and a “sad day” for the city.
“Their calamitous decision to loan a vast sum of public money to this failed business venture has left the residents of Brighton and Hove £51 million out of pocket. Our council must now repay their folly amounting to over £2 million each year for the foreseeable future – money that could’ve been spent on nurseries, play areas, public toilets, preventing homelessness, road repairs, transitioning to net zero and dozens of other vital local services.”
Chairwoman of Brighton i360 Ltd, Julia Barfield, said the decision comes after a “significant decline” in consumer spending and that the private company will work closely with the council throughout the process.
“Additionally,” she said “we are working closely with the prospective administrators at Interpath to ensure the continued operation of the business during this period and to explore all potential avenues for restructuring.”
The viewing deck will remain open while administrators search for a buyer to rescue the attraction.
What if we told you that in the next four minutes you’ll learn how to use a “secret” Knock-Out tool that will greatly simplify your Photoshop workflow and delver precision results faster than you thought possible? If this piques your interest, pay close attention to this video from the Photoshop Tutorials Pejiz YouTube channel.
As the name suggests, this oft-ignored tool enables you to “knock out” the contents of a particular layer from the layers below. You’ll learn how to make an appropriate selection, depending upon the type of element that needs to be removed.
Our instructor named Pejman is an accomplished designer who specializes in tutorials for inexperienced Photoshop users who want to up their game with straightforward post-processing techniques, photo-retouching tricks, and making the most of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). Most of the methods he describes work wonders for landscapes, portraits, wildlife images, and more.
Pejman demonstrates how to employ the Knock-Out tool when dealing with an unwanted Text layer. While watching how easy this is to do, keep in mind the myriad of other ways to put this method to use. The lesson begins with a quick demonstration of how to create a Text layer in the first place, just in case you ever want to do that.
Once you’ve imported an image here’s all you have to do: Press the “T” key to bring up the text window, type in you text, and hit “enter.” Then simply follow Pejman’s tips for refining various characteristics like font type and size, style attributes like italic or bold, and whether you want the type centered, flush left, or flush right.
Now that you’ve created a text layer it’s time to knock it out, and Pejman describes the simple step-by-step process for maintaining perfect balance in the photo with the use of simple Photoshop tools. This portion of the video runs barely three minutes so we’ll let the expert demonstrate exactly how it’s done rather than summarizing it here.
And for another basic primer don’t miss the Beginners Guide we featured recently with another image-editing expert who explains everything you need to know about Focal Length Blending in Photoshop and Lightroom.
