How can I correct this distortion?

[marimagen]

Hello, I have taken this picture with a Nikon 16-35 lens. I have tried to correct the perspective with Photoshop but was unable to straighten the line above the door. Is there a way to fix the problem? Thanks in advance, Marie

[PhotoEcosse]

Marie,

I saved your image and tried it using the normal perspective correction tools in Lightroom. It is easy enough to get that line to be horizontal - but is makes the whole image look decidedly weird as the many other lines in that composition no longer make a congruent picture. Whether there are more sophisticated tools in Photoshop that would allow you to alter that line without affecting the others, I do not know. Perhaps someone else can comment.

[marimagen]

Thanks for trying. It's exactly what happens, and I guess the only way to apply a correction that wouldn't distort the rest of the image would be to be able to intervene directly on that area instead of the whole picture.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hello, I have taken this picture with a Nikon 16-35 lens. I have tried to correct the perspective with Photoshop but was unable to straighten the line above the door. Is there a way to fix the problem?

Hi Marie,

I assume you wanted the door/wall at the end to be more rectangular? The only way of coming close without too much effort is by applying a panoramic projection distortion. Attached is a (very) quick (and unfinished) idea of where that would lead to. It's far from ideal, that would take more effort.

Cheers,
Bart

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Isn't this an area where DXO is particularly good at?

[Doug Peterson]

Capture One Pro 8 also provides lens corrections for the Nikon 16-35.

In my highly biased opinion it is also a much better workflow option overall than dX0 and provides better underlying quality for color, tonality, and overall look.

You owe it to yourself to try the free trial on this image and report back the results .

[marimagen]

Thanks for all your inputs. I'm going to try the different suggestions and see what happens. I have another pic with the exact same problem, so it would be great if I could find the "perfect" solution. Marie

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Capture One Pro 8 also provides lens corrections for the Nikon 16-35.

In my highly biased opinion it is also a much better workflow option overall than dX0 and provides better underlying quality for color, tonality, and overall look.

Hi Doug,

I agree, part of the issue may be lens distortion related, but part of the issue is also just coming from the 'extreme' angle of view and its projection on a flat (sensor) plane. This combination of wide angle and flat perspective (rectilinear) projection tends to stretch the corners/edges when we view the image from too far away.

Slobodan is correct that DxO offers a specific (anamorphosis) correction for that, but that tends to introduce the bending of straight line features. A specific panoramic stitching program allows to use a combination of reprojection (by altering the viewing direction and or camera position) and remapping to a different projection (I used PTGUI's 'Vedutismo' projection which can be useful for architecture).

You owe it to yourself to try the free trial on this image and report back the results .

Trying Capture One Pro is always a good suggestion, although in this particular case it can only produce a very good Raw conversion, but not a full compensation for this physical+psychological distortion effect. The psychological part is due to a too large viewing distance.

It would be interesting if a future version of Capture One allowed to compensate for such impossible distortions like a panostitcher can do on a single image. It would also help photographers who e.g. need to shoot large groups in confined spaces, but that would also require improving its resampling algorithms (which currently seem to be something like bicubic).

Cheers,
Bart

[Torbjörn Tapani]

There is a tool in Photoshop that is called Adaptive Wide Angle something. You can set bounds that you want straight and it will try to warp the image seamlessly.

[BernardLanguillier]

DxO viewpoint is IMHO the best option for these kind of perspective corrections, especially when combined with DxO's lens correction module that IMHO remains the best (this is coming from a C1 Pro 8 fanboy).

Shooting with a T/S lens or technical camera in the first place is of course an even better option.

An alternative is to shoot this as a 3 images pano stitch. PTGui would make it a breeze to set the verticals and horizontals of the door.

Cheers,
Bernard

[HarperPhotos]

Hello,

As said earlier Adaptive Wide Angle will work or you could try Perspective Wrap.

Cheers

Simon

[marimagen]

You're right! The distortion is also due to the fact that I stood in an off spot, too much to the left. I took other shots closer to the center of the image, and the distortion is only minimal. Thanks for all your suggestions. I'll try the DoX tool which I haven't used before, and the Wide Angle feature (I have to practice a bit because I didn't get such a nice result as the ones posted here!). Marie

[Some Guy]

I played a little bit with the lasso tool on the brown ceiling and the warp tool in CS6.

SG

[dwswager]

Adaptive wide angle PERSPECTIVE using the polygon tool making rectangles where they belong like around end of hall, ceiling, etc.  Line tool elsewhere.  Shift click (Windows) to tell Photoshop to make vertical/horizontal.  Select clear space from the warping with magic wand.  Select->Modify->Expand selection based on size of image.  Fill using content aware fill.  The regular pattern in the ceiling should fill pretty well.  Might need a little touchup.

[marimagen]

The Wide Angle command works pretty well, but it does need some touch up afterwards. Thanks again for your help, Marie