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Both packages have identical tools and features, which cover automatic and manual optical corrections to control barrel, pincushion and fisheye distortions, and also volumetric controls to balance the size of subjects shot with a wideangle. So let’s see how some of these tools in Viewpoint and Perspective Efex work.
How to get lens distortions free how to#
This is the reason that photographers shooting things like flatlays or architectural features spend so much of their time looking at spirit-levels! How to fix distortions Whatever the distortion you’re encountering, the human brain simply doesn’t see the world in that way, so something has to be done if you want your images looking as natural as possible.Īs you know, most image-editing software has tools to fix these kinds of distortions, but DxO Viewpoint and DxO Nik Collection Perspective Efex are dedicated to the process and give lots of variables, plus some other features, making the process very easy, intuitive and ultimately successful. If your camera lens isn’t aimed perfectly flat-on to the subject, then the lines in the object you’re shooting won’t be straight either. This same issue occurs when trying to shoot a flat subject like the side of a building, a window or even a poster. But if your lens is tilted up or down even slightly – as it often will be to capture an entire piece of architecture into the shot – then the vertical lines of the building will begin to converge or diverge.
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Keep the lens horizontal and the vertical lines will look straight. The obvious example is when framing up on buildings or street scenes. This can happen at all focal lengths, but it’s more prominent when shooting wideangle.
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Another offender – this time caused by the photographer’s positioning of the lens – is perspective distortion, also called converging or diverging verticals, or keystoning. And it’s especially troubling when people are framed at the edges of a picture taken on a wideangle lens, as they’ll widen in a way that no one is going to like. You’ll have seen this when framing up a street or nature scene with detail in the foreground, wherein those parts of the frame stretch out and look unnatural. In terms of the optical distortions that come from wideangle lens design, the main offender can often be barrel distortion, and whether you’re shooting architure, interiors, street or even nature shots with prominent straight lines, like trees or the horizon, it can make pictures look very unrealistic with those lines curving outwards from the centre, and making scenes look twisted and bulbous.Īllied to that is ‘volume anamorphosis’, a distortion that causes objects at the edge of the frame of a wideangle lens to become stretched compared to those in the centre. After all, not all lenses are created equal, and not all photographers are either. It’s well known that these distortions happen both due to the lens’s design, and from how you’re using it.
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See more you’re a photographer who uses wideangle lenses, you’ll know all about the optical distortions that can become a problem when shooting with them. Specialising in landscape, nature and documentary subjects, he also photographs dogs professionally for private clients and charities. Kingsley is a photographer, tutor, and writer with decades of experience in shooting technique and image editing.
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