# Correcting wide angle distortion in Lightroom



## Photographe (Apr 8, 2011)

I'm looking at the Lens Correction/Manual tool that has sliders for Distortion, Vertical, Horizontal, Rotate and Scale.

Is there a methodical way for correcting an image that has a lot of geometric distortion (I am not talking about the distortion inherent in every lens which the Lens Profile can take care of, but the wide angle distortion caused I think when horizon doesn't match up with center of lens).

I find that with very wide angle shots in Lightroom, fixing one part of the photo causes problems in other parts.  Is there a tool like the Straighten Tool in the Crop Window, where you tell LR what lines to be straight?


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## amazz (Apr 8, 2011)

The "angle" in crop tool will straighten , just click, hold and drag on the line you want straight, then release. J Kost on adobe tv has some vids on this and manual correction for distortion. You might want to give those a look, and maybe at how to do other stuff in lr.

Art


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## Mark Sirota (Apr 8, 2011)

There is no similar straighten tool for the Lens Corrections panel, unfortunately.  I agree it would be helpful; I'd suggest submitting a feature request usign the link in the gray bar at the top of the page.

And just to be clear, the rotate control in Lens Corrections is not the same as the one in Crop.  They operate at different phases of the processing chain.  If you're going to use the Vertical or Horizontal controls in manual lens corrections, you need to use the Rotate in that same panel rather than the one in Crop.  It's easy to spot the difference just by playing with these four controls.


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## Photographe (Apr 9, 2011)

Mark Sirota said:


> There is no similar straighten tool for the Lens Corrections panel, unfortunately.  I agree it would be helpful; I'd suggest submitting a feature request usign the link in the gray bar at the top of the page.
> 
> And just to be clear, the rotate control in Lens Corrections is not the same as the one in Crop.  They operate at different phases of the processing chain.  If you're going to use the Vertical or Horizontal controls in manual lens corrections, you need to use the Rotate in that same panel rather than the one in Crop.  It's easy to spot the difference just by playing with these four controls.


 
I was wondering why there was a rotate control in Lens Corrections... I will put in a feature request.  In the meantime, any tips on how to work with highly distorted images?


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## erro (Apr 9, 2011)

It shouldn't really matter in what direction you point the camera - the distortion is always the same. It's just that it is more or less obvious depending on where you have straight lines in your image.

Can you show us an image where you have this problematic distortion?


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## Photographe (Apr 9, 2011)

Erro, just point a camera up at a building a take a photo.  The vertical lines of the building will not be straight.  Point it straight at the building and they will be straight.  With wide angles and extreme wide angles, you don't have to be far from dead center to have an unpleasant effect, and it's not just buildings.  Landscape shots are affected too.  I tried to insert an image but I get you can't do that directly.


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## erro (Apr 9, 2011)

OK, now I see what you mean. That's not "distortion", it is "converging lines". In LR3 you can adjust that in the Develop module using "Lens correction" and the options to adjust the vertical or horizontal perspective to get straight lines.

By "distortion", people generally mean barrel or pincushion. Wide-angle lenses often have barrel distortion, causing the image to "bulge out" at the sides (like a barrel). Tele lenses tend to have the opposite, a pincushion distortion that cause the image to "bulge inwards" at the sides (like a bed cushion). This can also be adjusted in LR3 using "Lens correction" and the distortion slider.

You may have to edit both perspective (horizontal and/or vertical) and distortion, and rotation to get all lines straight and parallell.


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## Photographe (Apr 9, 2011)

It is more time-consuming than it needs to be, since it is mostly a mechanical task best done by a computer.  That's why I was hoping there was an automated function within LR that does the heavy lifting.  I have not found an easy way to do it in LR.


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## erro (Apr 9, 2011)

Please attach or upload a problematic file (preferably high resolution, many pixels) and I will give it a try.


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## hollybolly (Apr 9, 2011)

or use transform perspective in photoshop - I've had lightroom 3 for less than 24 hours so cannot really comment on what lightroom does to perspective, but since starting to use LR2 about 2 years ago I have still always used photoshop for sorting out my converging verticals. Lightroom is going to have to come up with a fairly impressive system to beat PS in my opinion.


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## Photographe (Apr 10, 2011)

hollybolly said:


> or use transform perspective in photoshop - I've had lightroom 3 for less than 24 hours so cannot really comment on what lightroom does to perspective, but since starting to use LR2 about 2 years ago I have still always used photoshop for sorting out my converging verticals. Lightroom is going to have to come up with a fairly impressive system to beat PS in my opinion.


 
I have to start using PS more.  I'll check out that function and if looks like it could be incorporated into LR, I'll make the suggestion over at the feedback forum.


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## erro (Apr 10, 2011)

As i said earlier: LR 3 already have perspective controls. Go to the Develop module and look at the "Lens correction" tab and the options to adjust the vertical or horizontal perspective to get straight lines.


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## b_gossweiler (Apr 10, 2011)

I use the perspective controls in LR (which I find amazing) because I want to avoid external edits whenever possible. Doing external edits breaks the chain of develop settings by baking the state before the external edit into a TIFF, which I want to avoid.

I used PTLens before LR3, which I threw out when LR3 arrived.

Beat


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## Photographe (Apr 10, 2011)

hollybolly said:


> or use transform perspective in photoshop - I've had lightroom 3 for less than 24 hours so cannot really comment on what lightroom does to perspective, but since starting to use LR2 about 2 years ago I have still always used photoshop for sorting out my converging verticals. Lightroom is going to have to come up with a fairly impressive system to beat PS in my opinion.


 
The controls in PS are amazing!  They let you do each corner of the photo separately, which is what's difficult to do in LR.  It looks like another case of LR fixing what wasn't broken.  I still would like to see more automation though.  My time is better spent on the more creative aspects of editing.

It's too bad that using PS requires breaking the non-desructive flow at an early stage.


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## Photographe (Apr 10, 2011)

erro said:


> As i said earlier: LR 3 already have perspective controls. Go to the Develop module and look at the "Lens correction" tab and the options to adjust the vertical or horizontal perspective to get straight lines.


 
It's difficult to do; I am looking for an easier way to do this very mechanical task.  Check out Photoshop to see ~one~ better way of doing it.  I've read that one of the other RAW converters out there has amazing perspective control, but I can't remember which.  (See my first post; I am aware of the LR function.)


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## erro (Apr 10, 2011)

As I also said earlier: please attach or upload a complicated image and let's see what we others can do with it. Please also explain what you find compicated about it.

Talking about images is one thing, but seeing and working with them is another.

If you don't want to share your image, fine, but then it's hard to help you any further.


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